The Threads That Bind
by Kepouros
Summary: The hunters are dragged into a fight with an evil coven, all because of one good witch with desirable power. While an epic battle looms, will the wandering witch bring death upon them all...or save them for the sake of her new love? SamxOC COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

_BOOM! _Pause. _BOOM!_

Click. Two plastic impacts on the floor, the casings still smoking.

Two soft _shicks. _Then, an assertive _ch-ch!_

Bobby stepped over the ashes of the witch's familiar, a Doberman-esque animal, and flung open his front door, rattling the knickknacks. With shotgun in one hand and Mason jar of lamb's blood in the other, he stepped onto his front porch and bellowed, "Next witch that tries to stop me gets a face full of rock salt, and a bellyful of lead shot!" He had one round in each barrel, because Bobby was nothing if not efficient.

The moonless night seemed to balk at him, and he thought the wind carried titters of laughter. The witches were close: he could literally smell them. The scent of the entrails they used in their black magic and the God-awful knot of pure dread they inspired in his ulcerated stomach would tip anyone off. This coven was the second in as many months to make an attempt on his house. And Bobby could only think of one thing that could cause it. He was expecting a visitor on the solstice. That visitor carried knowledge of an ancient dead magic.

If this coven managed to capture Bobby, as they were attempting to do now, they could get information out of him about the visitor, or hold his life for hers.

Bobby snarled. Over his dead body.

_No balls, no glory, _he thought, and set foot on the first front step. Nothing happened, so he continued to the second.

The third one very nearly killed him. Two pairs of hands reached from under the step and grabbed his ankles, pulling hard. Bobby went down, losing the shotgun and just barely keeping from shattering the Mason jar. The witches continued to pull, and their long, sharp nails gouged his ankles and calves with bloody streaks. In seconds, he had disappeared under the porch up to his hips. But for all their strength, the witches could not get his beer gut under the steps.

_Who says alcohol is bad for you? _thought Bobby to himself with hysterical relief. He cracked the jar's lid, dipped his fingers, and began to paint on the step in front of him, all the while kicking at the grasping witches. Thirteen well-practiced finger strokes later, and the pulling on his legs vanished with twin screams and a bright flash. Looking up, he saw other flashes from all over his yard, behind cars, and in the trees. Roughly fifteen in all, now piles of ash.

Those that were within the barrier, that is.

As Bobby wriggled his way out of the space, he indulged in a half second of sorrow for extinguishing human life, albeit demon-fueled, magic-twisted human life. But he was a hunter, acting in self-defense, and they were evil, as evidenced by his border magic's flare-up. If they hadn't tripped the 'evil intent' spell around his property, he would probably be going somewhere against his will, hogtied and with a bag on his head. It took a while for him to get free: he was wedged in tight. "Where's the butter when you need it," he grumbled, wincing as he inspected the damage to his legs. Nothing he couldn't fix up with some Jack Daniels and an Ace bandage.

He sighed, touched up the rune that completed the array around his lands, and gazed up at the matte gray moon."You'd better hurry, Adrienne. They're coming for you."

* * *

To a trained eye, such as the three malicious pairs that watched the house and junk yard gravely from the shadows of the woods, the magic was a slightly glowing line in the ground connecting the runes in a thirteen-point star. The thirteen-pointed runes were arranged in a thirteen-pointed star: nigh unbreakable, totally uncrossable for them. The magic ran loops around its track, constant, strong. It was engineered for witches in general, and specifically for their brand of evil craft.

They may have been thwarted in this manner, but they would catch her, the visitor, as she attempted to pass them to reach the safety of the hunter's house. The visitor had picked her refuge well, and the timing of her usual solstice visit to the hunter conveniently coincided with the acquisition of her new powers, as foretold by the tarot cards one of them carried.

"We must have patience, sisters," said the middle of the three women softly. The very insects fell silent at her voice, and the tiny hearts of baby animals in the area, from squirrels to birds, stopped in mid-beat. The wind stirred their long hair, their black clothes. In the dark their pale skin glowed faintly, and their eyes told of unspeakable evil and unimaginable tortures for their victims. These sisters were the matriarchs of the strongest coven on the continent. The air was saturated with their power...and their malevolence.

"We have traveled far and wide searching for this magic," reveled the first with a sharp-toothed smile, fingering the deck of tarot cards. The wind ceased to tumble at her voice, became absolutely, positively still. "And spelled away many moon-and-star signs in wait."

"A few more will not harm us," finished the third. Though the woods were damp from rain, the youngest seedlings crackled to embers at her voice. As one, they nodded in agreement and melted into the shadows by becoming shadows themselves.

They would lie in wait.

They would kill the wandering witch.

And with her blood-spilled power, they would rule unopposed.

For if they could turn the night dark and silent with merely their voices, oh, the things they could do with Threadspell.


	2. Chapter 2

The Impala was quiet. Not the I'm-too-pissed-at-you-to-even-look-at-you kind of quiet. It was the bone-tired, itchy-eyed, blood-crusted post hunt kind of quiet. Whitesnake's soothing notes of 'Here I Go Again' poured from the speakers, inverse to the way blood was ceasing to pour from the various cuts and slashes that decorated the skin of the hunters.

"I've said it before, and I'll say it again," started Dean in a gravelly voice from behind his split lips. "I hate vampires."

"I dunno, you were liking that one pretty good before I showed up," said Sam tersely. He kind of (re: totally, entirely, completely) blamed Dean for the screwfest that had been their latest hunt. They were pointed by newspaper clippings and missing persons reports to a town supposedly infested with vampires.

It was.

Because the local bloodbank kept the leeches tap dancing on the line of their self-control, these vampires supposedly were able to blend extremely well.

They could.

In fact, so accomplished were they at blending, Dean managed to PICK ONE UP AT A BAR WITHOUT FIGURING OUT BE WAS BANGING A FANGER UNTIL THE TEETH SPROUTED.

_One of these days, _Sam thought, _Dean's vices are gonna be the death him. Or me. Or both of us. _Granted, it had been just light enough to see your hand in front of your face_, _but Dean was a hunter, for pity's sake. Surely, he had more intuition than that._  
_

"Don't be jealous," replied Dean irritably, his fingers drumming. "Actually, on second thought, go right ahead."

"At least I can tell a monster from a human without sticking my..."

At that moment, the phone Sam carried rang, cutting him off from a stellar comeback line. He yanked the cell out of his pocket and answered gruffly, "Bobby?" said Sam. After a pause, he pressed the cellphone tighter to his ear, knuckles white with intensity. "What is it? Whoa, whoa slow down." The younger Winchester punched a button and Bobby Singer's voice sounded throughout the Impala.

"I told ya, idjit," came the voice from the phone, ticked off and anxious. "I just got some prison lovin' from a coven of witches. ON MY OWN FRONT PORCH!"

Dean's hands tightened to the point of bending the steering wheel. "Are you hurt?"

"Nah," replied Bobby. There came a sound of a shotgun breaking, two cases dropping, and two more being loaded. "I'm holed up good and tight. Where are you?"

"Minnesota, on the way to -"

"I need you here, as in yesterday. They're after her."

"After who?" interjected Sam urgently.

"If they get ahold of her, God only knows the things they could do. I'll explain later, boys, just get here ASAP."

The line went dead.

It was Dean's turn to wrinkle his brow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Sam shrugged.

The Impala squealed through a split-J turn and kicked up dead leaves on the dark country road, carrying them onward.


	3. Chapter 3

The pregnant moon cast its light without shame on the peaceful countryside. A midnight sky full of stars was like buckshot through the floor of heaven. The grass swayed in the light, cool breeze that brought the taste of rain. Trees, mere dark blotches on all sides, were serene guardians or traitorous hiders of evil, depending on your outlook. The woman whose presence was barely acknowledged by the ground she trod ascribed to the former belief. It wasn't the trees' faults that toothy and fearsome creatures took ambush positions in the embrace of their boughs. It wasn't their fault the predators of the night, real and imagined, hid in the shadows of their trunks...

Sensing her thoughts, the woman's companion, a German Shepherd up to her waist, growled quietly.

"'S okay, Hannibal," Adrienne murmured, shifting the backpack that carried her possessions. Out of the backpack wound a black, sleek shape: a cat that draped its body around her neck like a living scarf. "We'll be there soon, Hex." The feline's whiskers tickled her cheek and she took comfort in the sensation, as well as in the furry head with pointy ears that pushed itself into her palm.

Suddenly, the air changed, thickened with a magic she instantly recognized. The realization settled with dread in her heart. Location magic, and close by.

A singing hum sounded in her ears, like a thrumming note from a electric guitar. She stopped dead amidst the blowing trees and swaying grass, looking back the way she came. Hannibal, too, turned with his ears pricked. A look to the cat, Hex, showed him in a similar state of fright: his back was arched and claws extended, wide eyes glued to the trees. As the thrum came again, audible only to those it targeted, the witch recognized it. "Someone's trying to crysta-locate me," she whispered. Her hand raised to the necklace she wore: a single rune carved in iron. It vibrated in her hand. "The spell is bouncing off my ward pendant." Fear gripped her heart as she realized it could only be... "Oh, God, no." ...them. Were those shadows moving...?

"We've gotta book it," Adrienne said tersely, breaking into a jog. "Hustle!"

_Thrummmmmm..._ Same spell. It made her teeth grind.

"Bobby's expecting us," she huffed, more to herself than her familiars. Her torn up boots crushed the fragrant dead pine needles. "We always come on the solstices'. But I hope he won't shoot us on accident. We don't have time to knock politely." The shortest way to the protection of the house was through the junk yard. She could feel her pursuers closing in.

As they crossed the shallow meadow and the trees began to thin, piles of cars came into view, their metal bodies mottled with rust. The hair on the woman's arms stood in response to the shiver she felt as she passed a magical barrier. "This is new," she grunted. _Bobby must be having witch trouble, too._ She gritted her teeth and hunched over slightly, the cat dropping from her shoulders with a _purl? _sound. The cramps in the Adrienne's stomach grew, peaked, and as she pressed through the other side of the barrier, subsided. The witch spat the saliva that had boiled up under her tongue into the darkness and wiped her coldly sweating brow. That put one barrier between her and her pursuers.

It wasn't enough.

The next barrier was in the middle of the junk yard, unflagged and sudden. This time, the cramps hit so fast the woman went to her knees under their onslaught, heaving the meager contents of her stomach onto the ground. _Thrummmmm... _fainter this time: it was fading with distance. Four silken, light paws landed between her shoulder blades, and a cold nose pressed to her cheek. The woman took comfort in their touch and drew some of their energy into herself, stood, and hobbled out of the barrier zone on heavy feet. She didn't feel guilty about taking some of the animals' life force to sustain her. They would ask for it back eventually. With interest.

"Ugh, crap, Bobby, you tryin' to kill me?" she asked dilapidated cars. _No, not me. _Them. _This is much more serious than I thought._

_Thrummm..._the sound was barely there. _Almost safe, _thought Adrienne.

The third and final barrier was brutally deep: midway through it, the woman was left with spots dancing in her vision at the sheer, knife-twisting-in-gut pain. It radiated around to the small of her back, up her spine, and across her shoulders like hot wires wrapped around her bones. Hex and Hannibal, unaffected, stopped their traversal and turned to look back. "Go," croaked the woman, falling to her side and unceremoniously shedding her backpack straps. "I'm coming." The animals nodded and crossed the rest of the third barrier, but waited for her on the other side.

The pain stabbed unbearably and the woman drew hissing breaths through her teeth. She fished around in an outer pocket of the backpack and withdrew, by way of touch, a thick, wrinkled root. Still on her side and with the corners of her sight blackening rapidly, Adrienne wrapped a strand of her hair around the root. She muttered a quiet word layered in whispers to it, watching as the hair turned to ash, and took a measured bite of its dirt-crusted tip. Her spell enhanced the powers of the herbal remedy, accelerated them. Swallowing dryly, she pillowed her head on her arm and waited. The stabbing pain began to subside, fading like the moon's light as it is covered with a cloud. She tottered to her feet, hefted the backpack with a groan, and stumbled the rest of the way. The barrier buckled around her, trying to drag her back like a bubble stretching to its limits, and finally snapped back into place.

Safe. Just outside the barrier was a conveniently placed Buick Le Sabre that she collapsed upon, the cold hood soothing to the fiery ache in her back. The taste of the ginger root tickled her tongue and burned the back of her throat.

Dear God, he'd deemed it necessary to put that level of spell, just around his junkyard?

Adrienne was disturbed from her closed-eyed and cricket-serenaded reprieve by the sound of a shotgun cocking. "How'd you get through?" asked a gruff voice weighed down by a beer gut. "I'd like to know how to improve the system before I kill you."

The woman raised her head, still laying on the car hood. "Put that thing down, Bobby," she sighed. "Thank God: I had a bet out that you would simply shoot first and ask questions later."

The shadow of Bobby Singer flinched at his name, and the shotgun lowered an inch. "Adrienne?"

"What's shaking, buddy?" The woman asked tiredly. She smelled like weeks on the road, rain baths for hygiene, spooning with a wet dog, and fresh vomit: how did he not recognize her?

"You didn't need to cross the barriers," said Bobby, dropping his ironsight bead on the sprawled woman.

"Yeah, about those," Adrienne said primly. "Is it you intention to make a witch want to tear out her own bones, or is that just an extra?"

"It's your own fault for not having a cell phone," replied the hunter. "I would've warned you."

"All the same, my gluttony for punishment was not masochism. It was urgent," Adrienne replied, rearing up on the car hood. Her energy was returning. "Some witches were trying to locate me. They couldn't cross the barriers."

"That seems to be a growing trend around here."

"What, location spells?"

"No, witches testing my barriers." Bobby put the tip of the shotgun on his shoe and leaned on it. "I've had to strengthen them twice in the last month. And this step-up was after a particularly nasty incident."

Adrienne crossed her legs Indian-style. "Are you hurt?" she asked concernedly.

Bobby snorted. "Why does everyone ask that? I ain't that old."

"Forgive me, oh mighty silverback."

"You do recognize a shotgun when you see one, right?"

Adrienne laughed, but drew solemn again. "They're after me. They know I visit you on the solstices, and they waited to ambush me. If it weren't for my wards, they would've got me. As it is, I slipped right through."

"Balls!" Bobby swore. "So they're still out there?" He sighed, lifted the brim of his hat and readjusted it. "Come into the house, we can talk there." He went to reach out and help her off the car hood, but Hannibal growled and put himself between the humans, teeth bared. "Down, boy," said Adrienne. "He's a friend." The dog obeyed reluctantly. The witch slung on her backpack, accepting Bobby's hand. "It looks heavier," Bobby grunted.

"I have much to explain, friend."

A snort. "I'll say."

* * *

**Author's Note: Did you know that if you review, a cookie appears on your screen when hit the send button?**


	4. Chapter 4

As Sam and Dean rolled up in Bobby's yard, a dog barked. The light was already on in the study, and the front door was filled with the boy's plaid-clad surrogate father. Bobby was standing with his arms crossed, the barking dog at his side. "Quiet, Hannibal." The huge animal, a German Shepherd, ignored him and kept up its staccato displeasure.

The boys tamped down hisses as their various cuts stretched upon exiting the car. They grabbed their duffles out of the trunk and limped gamely up the steps. "Since when do you have a dog?" asked Sam, stopping a few feet away and eyeing the gnarly beast. Bobby couldn't even keep scorch marks off his kitchen ceiling, much less care for a dog.

"It's not mine," replied Bobby, his face set with distaste. "Adrienne, you better collar your dog!" he yelled into the house.

Dean knelt in front of the dog, extending a hand. "Hey, fella..."

The dog snapped at his hand angrily and resumed barking, squarely filling the doorway, slavering jaws full of teeth.

Someone poked their head around the corner from the living room. "Hannibal, _down!"_

Immediately, the dog's jaws clamped shut and it sat down, whining over its shoulder at the one who had commanded it. The voice's owner swayed into view in the dark entry hall. She had stick-straight blonde hair to her waist, secured with an elaborate black headband. The locks were all cut at varying lengths, as though hastily hacked. Her only adornment was a necklace with a silver pendant inscribed with some sort of rune. Her jeans were ripped at the knees and frayed at the heels, but the impression was not one of fashion, but heavy use. Her t-shirt was black, and in her long-fingered, well-worn hands was a steaming mug. "Forgive him," she said, the porch light catching her pale skin even though she remained out of its pool. "He's very protective." Her voice was gentle, yet carried a deceptive lilt of power.

"Sam, Dean," said Bobby, waving them into the house and shutting the door. "Meet Adrienne."

Dean turned on the charm and extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you," he said, lady killer smile in place. She took it with a cocked and skeptical eyebrow.

"She's a witch," continued Bobby.

Both Winchesters went into defensive mode as smoothly as the Impala's pistons fired. Dean jerked his hand out of hers like he'd been electrocuted and backed away. "Then why isn't she dead yet?" he demanded, reaching for his gun.

"Did she cast a spell on you?" growled Sam, reaching for Ruby's knife.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Tell 'em, Bobby."

The grizzled old mechanic grabbed both the boys' weapon arms. "She's no ordinary witch, idjits, or she wouldn't be _in my house_."

The brothers hesitated. Bobby's house was a supernatural Fort Knox. "Then what's she doing here?" asked Sam tensely.

"The only good witch is a dead witch," snarled Dean. Witches were second to shifters on his list of most hated monsters.

"Still standing here," the witch interjected with a hint of indignation.

"Trust me, she's no harm unless you get between her and a Hershey's bar," asserted Bobby. "Why she's here and what she can do for us...well, that's a long story."

"It had better have something to do with killing those witches that attacked you," muttered Dean.

Adrienne smiled the way a cat does when it's eaten the canary, the steam from her mug wafting over her face like a veil. "You'll find out soon enough."

oO0Oo oO0Oo oO0Oo

* * *

**Author's Note: **

**Review, and the Force will be with you!**


	5. Chapter 5

Adrienne's flat, quietly appraising stare did little to smooth the boys' feathers. In truth, she was trying to get a read on their auras. The most she could see was a roiling cloud around their bodies, the colors bleeding into each others' to make an indistinguishable, unified, striated mass. Dean's was a hard, unyielding, prejudiced mass of navy blue, but Sam's was a hair lighter. The younger Winchester glanced her way a few times whilst she lingered, and the color of his aura lightened a fraction each time.

Even when the Winchesters shifted on their feet, putting a few more inches between them, their auras stretched to accommodate. It was as though their emotions were tied to each other. Adrienne was both warmed and saddened by this insight into the hunters' bond: warmed for them, and saddened for herself.

_I'll never be able to share that sort of bond with anyone else, _she told herself, frowning. The pain was an old wound, scarred over but scalpeled open with each new reminder.

In the foyer, Dean and Sam were listening with tight faces to Bobby. "The coven knows that Adrienne visits on the solstices," said the oldest hunter. "When they found out she was in possession of this magical knowledge, they both chased her and set a trap for her here. She made it here, to safety, but not before the coven attacked me numerous times."

"They wanted to hold you for ransom? A witch's life for yours is what I call a win-win."

"They'd give him back, anyway," deadpanned Sam. "He'd annoy the crap out of them."

Dean snorted. "Come on. A small-time witch gets a little know-how, and suddenly she's on the Most Wanted Witch List?"

"This knowledge catapulted her to the very top of that list," replied Bobby. "She had to take on two familiars just to control the power it gave her."

Dean's look of confusion prompted Sam to explain, "Familiars help a strong witch keep a handle on her magic by channeling some of it into themselves. Otherwise it would turn her into a piece of fatback left in the fryer too long. In return, they feed off the life force of the witch. Usually they're directly linked to certain emotions in their master. That's how their conjured."

"So she's not so little, big deal," snarked Dean as the trio made their way to the study. "I still don't see what this has to do with us."

"We're trapped here," said Adrienne as they rounded the corner. "All of us. Until they give up, capture me, or kill us all."

Dean's arms folded and he planted his feet outside the study, refusing to even set foot into the room Adrienne occupied.

"Boy, if ya don't start trusting my judgment in the next five seconds, you're sleeping in the Impala tonight," said Bobby impatiently.

"I will be anyway if _she's _staying here," shot back Dean.

"Do you think that you can judge someone by their actions, Dean?" queried the witch boldly.

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, so?"

"Then judge me by mine."

"You haven't done anything yet."

"Then reserve judgment until I do."

Dean stared at the young woman. His prejudices died hard, always had. His nerves were screaming "Gank her, gank her!", but his head was making sense of her words. He was pissed at being dragged into the middle of this fight that was not his, but now that he was in it, he might as well get with the program.

Bobby pushed his way into the study, plopping into his desk chair and dragging one of his innumerable whiskey bottles to bear on a series of mismatched shot glasses. This lured the reluctant brothers into the room, and they made themselves comfortable a just-so distance from Adrienne.

Bobby raised the bottle in Adrienne's direction with a questioning look. "Hair o' the dog?"

"None for me," she declined with a smile. "I get drunk enough on caffeine and Jesus."

This brought the tiniest flicker of a smile to Dean's lips. He hid it quickly, downed his shot, and poured another. "The whole reason we're involved in this is because you couldn't handle yourself," accused Dean. "Now we're all in danger, and it's your fault."

"I know that," replied Adrienne tightly. "And I feel awful as it is. But I have to keep this knowledge out of the coven's hands. If they get ahold of it, no hunter in the world could stop them."

In the silence that followed, Hex, the black cat, walked along the back of the couch and curled his tail around his paws, staring out the window. The mug was now cool in Adrienne's hands. Pulling a frayed string from her jeans, she muttered a whisper-layered word as she pulled it through her fingers, dropped the end into her mug, and removed it. The steam began to rise again.

"What was that?" asked Sam in disbelief.

"Threadspell," replied Adrienne, toasting him sardonically with the mug. "The source of our troubles."

"No, that would be you," said Dean silkily. Hannibal growled from the floor, showing mean teeth.

"Down, boy," said Adrienne. The dog obeyed, but kept his ears pricked to Dean with a hateful look. "He's tied to my anger," explained the witch. "So quit pissing me off."

"He's a friggin' dog," snarled Dean.

She smiled, and mocked his silky voice. "Why do you think I named him Hannibal, after the cannibalistic serial killer?"

"Lay off, Dean," advised Sam. "It'd suck if your gravestone read 'Here Lies Dean Winchester: He Pissed Her Off'."

They all snickered. The light moment was cut short by a sudden, gale-force wind battering the windows, along with raindrops the size of quarters. "What the - ?"

Adrienne twisted in her seat with her brow wrinkled, peeking around the curtains as though seeing through the near-solid sheets of rain. "They're reminding us that they're here. The border magic is still in place, so they can't directly harm us."

All three hunters relaxed marginally. "How did we make it past them without getting killed?" asked Sam. "The Impala's been bewitched before."

"It's simple: they wanted you to live," replied Adrienne, sipping her mug.

"Smart witches," said Dean darkly.

"Your car's body is iron, right?" opined Adrienne. "Steel, or a steel alloy?"

"Yeah," said Dean grudgingly. "Steel alloy."

"Steel is made with iron, which repels witches and spells. They couldn't have spelled you or touched the car even if they wanted."

"How do we plan on killing them?" asked Bobby. "I ain't keen on staying here indefinitely. Any ideas?"

"It's late," said Sam. "They aren't going anywhere, and neither are we. I say we get some shut-eye and carve out a game plan tomorrow." They murmured assent punctuated with a yawn or two, and that brought the tense conversation to an end. The oppressive air of it fled the room, leaving space to breathe again. Sam knocked back a second shot, clinked the glass to the desktop, and peeled off his jacket. It came away with a wince and showed the bloodstains on his shirt. Bobby pulled a firstaid kit out from under the desk, shook it, and frowned. "Out of Bandaids."

"It may take more than that," said Sam, unbuttoning the shirt.

"Sewing kit it is, then."

"May I take a look?" asked the witch. Her tone was one of actual concern, tinged with the probability that she would be turned down.

Sam, eager to make up for his brother's mistrust, nodded. "I'm not sure there's much you can do. They're scabbed up and - hey, um, what are you doing?"

Adrienne had fished a ball of bright orange yarn out of her bag and was tying it around Sam's bicep. "A little demonstration." She pinned him with pleading eyes. "That is, if you agree. It won't hurt at all, I promise."

_I promise. _Words spoken by a child at heart who still believed that promises meant something in a world of lies. Sam saw her honesty, and it gave his heart a little pang. "Okay."

Dean tensed. "It'd better not hurt him," he muttered, ever protective.

Adrienne ignored him and worked steadily, tying the garishly colored yarn over every cut visible on Sam's torso. When she stopped, the orange string crossed his chest several times to touch the thin gashes on his pectoral, around his back to the deeper claw marks, around his neck, arms, and even the smaller cuts on his fingertips. She held the end and wrapped it in a complicated spiderweb pattern between her fingers and onto the other hand, like a yo-yo trick. Sam looked a bit nervous, and rather silly, trussed up like a Christmas bird.

"Ready?" she asked, giving him as much assurance as she had in her affirmative smile.

Sam swallowed, and nodded.

She bowed her head and began to chant.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**And now, I shall mysteriously disappear!**

***throws down ninja bomb, runs away***


	6. Chapter 6

Bobby always kept candles lit in the study, for the dual purposes of light and supernatural hanky-panky detection. Now, their persistent flames began to flap wildly. Adrienne's chanting had tones, octaves, _layers_: whispers in the corners of their ears, scraping falsetto on their eardrums, base-y thrumming in their chests. The two onlookers glanced around with concern: Bobby more for his house and Dean for his brother, who sat stock-still in a chair, wrapped with freaking orange yarn and the (stupidly!) willing subject of a witch's power. It was against Dean and Bobby's very nature to stand idly by. But they did - barely.

The eight feet between the two pairs may as well have been a mile. Sam and Adrienne were the eye of a storm of power: the air currents that shimmered and finally stole the candle flames did not so much as ruffle Sam's hair. There was air, there was _atmosphere_, but every molecule of it was steeped with magic like honeysuckle perfume.

Sam watched her. Closely. He'd never been on the receiving end of a benign witch's spell. Any magic that was directed his way was always trying to kill, maim, or sterilize him. He felt compelled to understand: where did she draw power? What did those echoing words actually mean? Why did she look so...peaceful, yet unbreakable as a steel rod? So now, with his scholar's brain, he observed. The strands of Adrienne's blonde hair rose like a corona above her head with lingering static. She swayed to the song of the ancient language she half-sang, half-spoke, eyes fixed on the tangle in her fingers, lips moving in discordance with the sounds they made. In the back of Sam's mind, he had to admit to himself: she was beautiful. Fierce, and somewhat intimidating in the throes of her ability, but beautiful.

Sam could feel her power running along his skin like insects, and it scared him a little. The feeling was like being in the vicinity of a dangerous dog, even though it was heeled by its master's side. Sam imagined, before pushing the fear away, that this imaginary dog was giving him evil eyes, silently promising to rip his throat out when the master wasn't there to control it. He shook his head to dispel the thought.

Suddenly, all at once, the power coagulated in the air, a swirl of light and mist. And then, it...struggled. Sam had no other words to describe it. The magic was living, and after being showed a taste of freedom, it fought the pull of Adrienne's final words, which rose in a tone of authority that scraped Sam's ears like a dull knife tip: touching, but being restrained from cutting.

Adrienne had stopped speaking, and was caressing the yarn in her fingers in time with her breath. With a bottom-of-the-lungs inhale, the reluctant magic was sucked out of the air and settled with a luminescent glow into the array of yarn. The candles relighted themselves, and the loose papers blown about settled to the floor. "You okay?" Adrienne asked, coming out of her daze.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," replied Sam quickly, heart pounding. He eyed the array of yarn spread like a dream-catcher in her long fingers, pulsing as though it was breathing. "That's the actual spell, right?"

"Yes. Talk about build-up, huh? All that," she nodded around at the disheveled study, "Just for this pretty little thing."

"Are we done here?" asked Dean, his posture intensely guarded.

"Not at all," replied Adrienne dismissively. She saw the curious gleam in the younger hunter's expression. A compulsion caught her. "You wanna touch it?" She asked, tongue in cheek.

Dean snickered. _Okay, maybe this witch isn't so bad._

"I wouldn't," muttered Bobby uneasily.

Adrienne didn't seem to hear them. "Well?" she queried softly. She took a half step closer, arms extended.

Sam raised one arm, the one not tied with yarn, fingers outstretched. He was transfixed, but hesitated just shy of touching the glowing web.

"It's okay," she said, smiling gently. "I've got the reins. It won't hurt you."

"Sammy," warned Dean. "Don't."

"'S alright, Dean," said Sam, noting the complete confidence in Adrienne's eyes. He touched the center of the web.

It was a strange sensation. Like the caress of steam, it was a gas trying to be liquid, heat trying to be cold, light trying to be fog. The undercurrent of indistinct vibration tickled his antsy, ready-to-flinch fingertips. But Sam mastered the instinct, and plucked another strand. "Dude, this is so cool," he breathed, a smile growing on his face.

"What's it feel like?" asked Dean, dropping his disinterested pretense.

"Amazing," Sam replied.

Adrienne had sank to a crouch in front of the chaired hunter, and now, her quiet laugh caused Sam to look at her. "We're part of a club, now," she said, face lit from beneath by the array. "We know the touch of magic, and yet we live. This is cord sorcery, threadspell: the magic that binds or severs, heals or kills." She rose, splayed her fingers wide, and muttered a single word just out of hearing. The glowing pulse, freed like a rock from a sling, ricocheted around the array with a pitched hum, following the string's course over, under, around and across her hands. It bolted along the yarn that connected the witch and the hunter, leaving the orange yarn black. Sam gasped as it reached him, but the magic ran eagerly over his body, confined to its tracks. As it came to his crusty wounds, it hesitated just long enough to cause an old-scab sort of itch. The bloody cuts and slashes closed up, melting, wax under flame.

As the magic reached the end of the string, which was tied to his bicep, it simply terminated, dissipated in a small shower of sparks. The blackened yarn fell from his body, turning to ash before it hit the carpet.

"And that," said Adrienne, brushing the remains of the array from her fingers with a flourish. "Is thread spell."

"Cocky thing, ain't she?" stage-whispered Bobby.

"No more than Dean," she shot back.

"Hey!"

They settled in to wear out the hours, carefully packing the evil witches' siege into a mental box labeled: 'Do Not Open Until Morning'. For now, they were safe. The hunters caught up on hunts, news, and possible leads on open jobs, undeterred by Adrienne's presence. She smiled as she sipped her third cup of tea. The demonstration had had the desired effect. The hunters were somewhat at ease around her (even though Dean had declined her magic touch on his wounds), and possibly in the beginning stages of trust. As the night wore on and yawns started to spread, Adrienne excused herself to bed.

But first, a shower was in order. After toweling her hair dry, one of Bobby's old shirts was perfect sleepwear. Adrienne pulled back the comforter, groaning. "What a day." Hannibal jumped onto the bed with her, and Hex padded to the corner of the bureau next to the bedroom door. The dog laid his head on her chest, cocking his expression towards her. Adrienne sighed. "Tonight?"

The dog gave an affirmative woof.

Adrienne bit her lip and sat up in bed, readjusting the dog's head to her lap. She plucked a strand of her hair and fished around in his thick neck fur for the thin, loose collar that resided there. By the light of a single candle that blazed the watching cat's eyes, the witch tied the strand of her hair to the collar, and the other end to her finger. With the tip of the knife she kept under her pillow, she added a cut to the orderly row of scars in her index finger. As the blood drop ran along the strand of hair, she noticed the tiny scars were fading away with time. At her quiet word, the blood transformed into a drop of glistening, magic-imbued liquid.

Although the cat and dog familiars were storage units for her power, when she utilized their life force as she had when permeating Bobby's barriers, they required her to return it, with interest. It was easiest to do when they slept, via a simple spell.

Hannibal growled as the blood hit his collar, and his eyes began to glow with the same magic that had healed Sam. Adrienne laid back on the bed, tied finger on her belly, and the dog laid down beside her, eyes closing as he siphoned off her brilliant energy.

"Sleep well," murmured Adrienne, running her free hand through his fur. "Don't take too much."

As they drifted off, the cat continued to watch, tail twitching.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**I know, I know. You're all like WHAT?**

**It will all come to light in the next chapter, promise. You'll have to wait until I finish school this week.**

**And now, I shall mysteriously, disappear!**

**POOF!**


	7. Chapter 7

Adrienne dressed for the day as the coffee warmed her veins, choosing broken-in jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt that said 'Don't Panic, It's Organic!' Tying back her hair, she looked in the mirror. Her face looked carefree, but her eyes betrayed her cornered, tumultuous emotions.

God, she'd fallen straight into their trap. She should've run away when her pendant vibrated. She should've kept Bobby and the Winchesters out of this. Now their lives were in danger, and if someone died, it would be all her fault..."Hell with it," she muttered, tossing her head, defiant towards her reflection. "This was gonna happen eventually."

She didn't know if she could outwit and out-witch the Matriarchs. It felt like their power loomed mountains above hers. But then, her ever-so-helpful subconscious piped up: hey, if they're so intent on killing you and taking your powers, doesn't that mean you're a threat to them?

Adrienne's heart fluttered. "They're scared of me," she marveled. "North America's most powerful coven is scared of little ol' me!" She was flooded with courage in her skill, and confidence in her magic. _I may not be able to change the past, but I can control the future, _she determined, resolve steeling. _I _will _make it out of this. And so will the hunters. _

Mug in hand she strode from the room, iron-eyed and bushy-tailed. _  
_

* * *

"I need three volunteers," announced Adrienne, wandering into the study where the hunters were cleaning the guns and counting out rounds. Expectantly, she looked at the hunters, who suddenly were imitating third-world sweatshop employees.

"Not it," said Bobby blithely, jamming an old toothbrush into the barrel of a Smith and Wesson.

"Not it," echoed Dean sharply, oiling the cylinder of a handgun.

Sam muttered something to that nature and tried to blend with the furniture, filling shotgun shells with teaspoonfuls of rock salt. Dean had been filling their ears all morning about Adrienne's supposed midnight spell working, and Bobby was about to lose his cool. If Sam acted too enthused by the thought of doing more magic, they would crucify him.

The older Winchester looked up and stopped his gun cleaning. "Does your shirt really say that?" Dean deadpanned.

"Yep. I'm all-natural. I might as well advertise it," the witch rejoined. Her mood seemed cajoling and pleasant, but not for long if Dean had his way. "By 'volunteers', I mean you've been drafted," Adrienne continued, hands on her hips. "It's time to show these witches who they're dealing with."

"What do you have in mind?" asked Sam before he could stop himself, earning glares from his elders.

"You know they're watching the house right now by scrying," explained Adrienne. "How would you like to blind anyone who uses their magic mirrors on us?"

That got their attention.

A few minutes later they were huddled in the front yard under the quick-moving grey scud clouds and stiff breeze, watching Adrienne try to get a compass reading. The needle jumped like a cricket in her palm. "It's all over the place," she growled, shoving it into her pocket. "They're running some serious mojo out there."

"Oh, well," said Dean with faux disappointment. "Hogwarts is out for the summer."

"Just give me a sec." The witch eyeballed the sun, noting which way her shadow was cast. "Bobby, you're south."

"Of what?"

"South of stupid. Now get over there. Dean, you're west."

"Joy."

"Sam, you're east."

"Right."

Amidst the lackadaisical remarks, Adrienne directed them three paces apart at each cardinal point of the compass and visited them each in turn, gracing their necks with a rune necklace. "If we have to sing Kumbaya, count me out," said Dean.

"No singing required, Janet Jackson," she replied instantly. Sam and Bobby snickered.

With no small amount of patience, she tied a handspun string into a roughly pentagram-shaped array on each man's outstretched fingers. "Do not screw up my knotwork," she warned.

"Don't worry, purple is a healthy color for digits," remarked Bobby.

"Can it, darling," Adrienne said sweetly. "Do you guys want to know what's gonna happen, or do you want it to be a surprise?"

The hunters exchanged looks. "Speak, oh Mistress of the Yarn," drawled Dean.

"The necklaces are like deputy badges," the witch explained. "The magic doesn't like being bossed around by non-witches. Those necklaces basically say that you are operating under my authority."

"Awesome, Sheriff," smirked Sam.

She finger-gunned him from hip level, rolling her eyes. "The spell is the string, obviously. One thing most people don't know is that scrying witches have to watch from one of the four directions on the compass."

"Actually, I didn't know that," murmured Bobby.

"By spelling those four directions, we effectively blind the enemy, literally and figuratively." She clapped her hands together. "So, we ready?"

"No," Dean said seriously. He was more willing to do this than he let on: seeing Sam mess with magic had piqued his interest, and besides that, he didn't want any witches watching him.

_Typically, I charge by the half-hour for that,_ he thought, smirking.

"The magic needs to know who's in charge, or it'll cut you like bad company. I need a bit more confidence than that, guys," she sing-songed, striding to her northern position and casually threading her fingers. "Lemme hear your authority! Who's da boss?"

"I am!" shouted Sam, earning surprised laughs from Bobby and Dean.

"I can't hear you!"

"I am!" chorused the hunters. It felt so_ good_ to pretend to be in control. Like they weren't trapped and being watched, like the coven wasn't changing the very weather with their spells in an attempt to get at them.

"Who's got the power?"

"Whoo!"

"Yeah!"

"Now," Adrienne directed, raising her tied fingers. "Repeat after me!" She chanted a simple two-lined verse that quickly caught the tongues of the hunters, and in moments, the arrays in their hands were attaining glow.

Dean could feel the magic testing his resolve, pulling at the edges of his concentration, and he willed it into submission. His array was blessed with a small flame in the center. "Hey, I got it!"

Bobby and Sam's arrays flamed, too, and Adrienne stopped chanting as hers sparked. "On three, turn 180 degrees and scream for all you're worth! One, two, THREE!"

Four pairs of boots spun on their heels, and their yells filled the air. The flames departed their hands as though shot from guns and disappeared into the distance. Faintly, from deep in the woods, a chorus of high-pitched screams could be heard.

The string in their hands dissolved into ash.

"Great job, guys," said Adrienne, brushing her front off. "But don't quit your day jobs..."

* * *

The three hunters and their witch guest sat around the coffee table, which was spread with maps, spell books, translation guides, and various herbs that still smoked in a copper bowl. The mood was one of deep dissatisfaction, like business executives drawing close to a compromise that left them all feeling uniquely cheated. They'd gone over ever nuance of the defenses, analyzed everything they knew about the coven, and plumbed the perimeters of the property with magic and their own eyes. All signs pointed that the coven still lingered: watching with deathly eyes, waiting with all the patience of a cheetah chomping on the windpipe of a gazelle. It was only a matter of time before the prey tried to escape. Whether it was starvation or desperation that spurred them remained to be seen.

"So it's settled," said Bobby, flinging down his readers with a grimace. "There's no other way. We go in balls out and guns blazing, tomorrow night."

"I am, alas, ball-less," grinned Adrienne weakly, trying to make light of their doomy prognosis. "But I will attempt the same."

Dean slouched on the farthest end of the sofa, pouting at having to share the furniture with Adrienne. "We'll need to take inventory of the stockpile, Bobby."

The oldest hunter stood. "Let's do it." They rose (Dean practically sprinted) and left the room.

The atmosphere weighed heavy on the remaining two occupants for several minutes, until Sam huffed and ran his hand through his hair. "Hey," he said. "Would you...do you wanna go for a walk?"

Adrienne's brow creased. "Where?"

"Anywhere but here."

They settled on traversing the outside of the house, close enough the anti-scrying spell from earlier in the day would keep their conversation from being overheard. The witches lying in wait on the other side of the barrier a mere two-hundred feet away were altering the weather, making it cold and gusty, presumably to demoralize their cornered prey. Skirting a clump of decrepit azalea, Sam suddenly asked, "What makes you different?"

Adrienne stopped and tilted her head, studying him carefully. "You'll have to be a bit more specific."

"How is your magic different from theirs?" he gestured to the barrier that kept them safe.

The witch didn't answer at first, instead kneeling to brush the dead leaves from a rosebush. "The most obvious answer," she began, "Is that they use their magic for what is known as evil, whereas I use mine for what is generally perceived as good, such as healing your injuries."

As if in response, Sam's skin that was once bound by ugly orange yarn tingled. "Perceived?"

She gave a little laugh. "I could argue ethics and morals all day with you. But let's just leave it at: they kill people for no reason at all, and I do not unless my life is threatened."

Sam wanted to ask more, but realized that the discussion would take them all day. She was on their side: that would have to do. And somehow, it _did _comfort him. "And the less obvious answer?"

"My magic is fueled by my own energy. Theirs runs off of deals with demons, which gives them powers sealed by blood spells." She jerked, raising a thorn-sliced finger for inspection. "Sometimes I pity them," she said softly, pulling a piece of thread from her pocket. "The underlings, the foot soldiers of the coven, really have no idea what price their power comes at. The Matriarchs keep them blind to the consequences of their deal until it is too late."

"The Matriarchs?"

"The three sister witches in charge of the coven. They're practically immortal, extremely strong physically and magically, and endlessly determined. The sound of their collective voice and the weight of their total gaze can mean death to some."

A particularly cold gust of wind blew up the back of Sam's shirt, chilling his spine. "How should we deal with them?"

She dragged the string in her hand through the blood welling on the tip of her finger, and began to tie it like a spiderweb on the rosebush. "You're not." With words stolen by the wind and a pluck of a pertinent strand, the rosebush's leaves turned a healthy shade of green. Buds began to swell on the stems, blooming the same color as the blood that gave them life.

"What do you mean, we're not?" asked Sam angrily.

"I mean, they're mine to deal with," she responded calmly, straightening. "I'm the only one who even has a prayer. Sending a hunter after a Matriarch would be homicide."

"We can handle ourselves," Sam replied tersely.

"What part of 'death-gaze' and 'voice-killing' don't you understand?" she growled. "They will kill you where you stand. No hesitation. You won't know what hit you."

"If there is one thing I can't stand," he said, turning away, shaking his head, "It's a martyr." He stalked away, and a moment later, the door to the house slammed shut.

Adrienne tore the string from the rosebush angrily, sending newly blackened leaves and brown petals scattering in the air.


	8. Chapter 8

Adrienne dressed for the day as the coffee warmed her veins, choosing broken-in jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt that said 'Don't Panic, It's Organic!' Tying back her hair, she looked in the mirror. Her face looked carefree, but her eyes betrayed her cornered, tumultuous emotions.

God, she'd fallen straight into their trap. She should've run away when her pendant vibrated. She should've kept Bobby and the Winchesters out of this. Now their lives were in danger, and if someone died, it would be all her fault..."Hell with it," she muttered, tossing her head, defiant towards her reflection. "This was gonna happen eventually."

She didn't know if she could outwit and out-witch the Matriarchs. It felt like their power loomed mountains above hers. But then, her ever-so-helpful subconscious piped up: hey, if they're so intent on killing you and taking your powers, doesn't that mean you're a threat to them?

Adrienne's heart fluttered. "They're scared of me," she marveled. "North America's most powerful coven is scared of little ol' me!" She was flooded with courage in her skill, and confidence in her magic. _I may not be able to change the past, but I can control the future, _she determined, resolve steeling. _I _will _make it out of this. And so will the hunters. _

Mug in hand she strode from the room, iron-eyed and bushy-tailed. _  
_

* * *

"I need three volunteers," announced Adrienne, wandering into the study where the hunters were cleaning the guns and counting out rounds. Expectantly, she looked at the hunters, who suddenly were imitating third-world sweatshop employees.

"Not it," said Bobby blithely, jamming an old toothbrush into the barrel of a Smith and Wesson.

"Not it," echoed Dean sharply, oiling the cylinder of a handgun.

Sam muttered something to that nature and tried to blend with the furniture, filling shotgun shells with teaspoonfuls of rock salt. Dean had been filling their ears all morning about Adrienne's supposed midnight spell working, and Bobby was about to lose his cool. If Sam acted too enthused by the thought of doing more magic, they would crucify him.

The older Winchester looked up and stopped his gun cleaning. "Does your shirt really say that?" Dean deadpanned.

"Yep. I'm all-natural. I might as well advertise it," the witch rejoined. Her mood seemed cajoling and pleasant, but not for long if Dean had his way. "By 'volunteers', I mean you've been drafted," Adrienne continued, hands on her hips. "It's time to show these witches who they're dealing with."

"What do you have in mind?" asked Sam before he could stop himself, earning glares from his elders.

"You know they're watching the house right now by scrying," explained Adrienne. "How would you like to blind anyone who uses their magic mirrors on us?"

That got their attention.

A few minutes later they were huddled in the front yard under the quick-moving grey scud clouds and stiff breeze, watching Adrienne try to get a compass reading. The needle jumped like a cricket in her palm. "It's all over the place," she growled, shoving it into her pocket. "They're running some serious mojo out there."

"Oh, well," said Dean with faux disappointment. "Hogwarts is out for the summer."

"Just give me a sec." The witch eyeballed the sun, noting which way her shadow was cast. "Bobby, you're south."

"Of what?"

"South of stupid. Now get over there. Dean, you're west."

"Joy."

"Sam, you're east."

"Right."

Amidst the lackadaisical remarks, Adrienne directed them three paces apart at each cardinal point of the compass and visited them each in turn, gracing their necks with a rune necklace. "If we have to sing Kumbaya, count me out," said Dean.

"No singing required, Janet Jackson," she replied instantly. Sam and Bobby snickered.

With no small amount of patience, she tied a handspun string into a roughly pentagram-shaped array on each man's outstretched fingers. "Do not screw up my knotwork," she warned.

"Don't worry, purple is a healthy color for digits," remarked Bobby.

"Can it, darling," Adrienne said sweetly. "Do you guys want to know what's gonna happen, or do you want it to be a surprise?"

The hunters exchanged looks. "Speak, oh Mistress of the Yarn," drawled Dean.

"The necklaces are like deputy badges," the witch explained. "The magic doesn't like being bossed around by non-witches. Those necklaces basically say that you are operating under my authority."

"Awesome, Sheriff," smirked Sam.

She finger-gunned him from hip level, rolling her eyes. "The spell is the string, obviously. One thing most people don't know is that scrying witches have to watch from one of the four directions on the compass."

"Actually, I didn't know that," murmured Bobby.

"By spelling those four directions, we effectively blind the enemy, literally and figuratively." She clapped her hands together. "So, we ready?"

"No," Dean said seriously. He was more willing to do this than he let on: seeing Sam mess with magic had piqued his interest, and besides that, he didn't want any witches watching him.

_Typically, I charge by the half-hour for that,_ he thought, smirking.

"The magic needs to know who's in charge, or it'll cut you like bad company. I need a bit more confidence than that, guys," she sing-songed, striding to her northern position and casually threading her fingers. "Lemme hear your authority! Who's da boss?"

"I am!" shouted Sam, earning surprised laughs from Bobby and Dean.

"I can't hear you!"

"I am!" chorused the hunters. It felt so_ good_ to pretend to be in control. Like they weren't trapped and being watched, like the coven wasn't changing the very weather with their spells in an attempt to get at them.

"Who's got the power?"

"Whoo!"

"Yeah!"

"Now," Adrienne directed, raising her tied fingers. "Repeat after me!" She chanted a simple two-lined verse that quickly caught the tongues of the hunters, and in moments, the arrays in their hands were attaining glow.

Dean could feel the magic testing his resolve, pulling at the edges of his concentration, and he willed it into submission. His array was blessed with a small flame in the center. "Hey, I got it!"

Bobby and Sam's arrays flamed, too, and Adrienne stopped chanting as hers sparked. "On three, turn 180 degrees and scream for all you're worth! One, two, THREE!"

Four pairs of boots spun on their heels, and their yells filled the air. The flames departed their hands as though shot from guns and disappeared into the distance. Faintly, from deep in the woods, a chorus of high-pitched screams could be heard.

The string in their hands dissolved into ash.

"Great job, guys," said Adrienne, brushing her front off. "But don't quit your day jobs..."

* * *

The three hunters and their witch guest sat around the coffee table, which was spread with maps, spell books, translation guides, and various herbs that still smoked in a copper bowl. The mood was one of deep dissatisfaction, like business executives drawing close to a compromise that left them all feeling uniquely cheated. They'd gone over ever nuance of the defenses, analyzed everything they knew about the coven, and plumbed the perimeters of the property with magic and their own eyes. All signs pointed that the coven still lingered: watching with deathly eyes, waiting with all the patience of a cheetah chomping on the windpipe of a gazelle. It was only a matter of time before the prey tried to escape. Whether it was starvation or desperation that spurred them remained to be seen.

"So it's settled," said Bobby, flinging down his readers with a grimace. "There's no other way. We go in balls out and guns blazing, tomorrow night."

"I am, alas, ball-less," grinned Adrienne weakly, trying to make light of their doomy prognosis. "But I will attempt the same."

Dean slouched on the farthest end of the sofa, pouting at having to share the furniture with Adrienne. "We'll need to take inventory of the stockpile, Bobby."

The oldest hunter stood. "Let's do it." They rose (Dean practically sprinted) and left the room.

The atmosphere weighed heavy on the remaining two occupants for several minutes, until Sam huffed and ran his hand through his hair. "Hey," he said. "Would you...do you wanna go for a walk?"

Adrienne's brow creased. "Where?"

"Anywhere but here."

They settled on traversing the outside of the house, close enough the anti-scrying spell from earlier in the day would keep their conversation from being overheard. The witches lying in wait on the other side of the barrier a mere two-hundred feet away were altering the weather, making it cold and gusty, presumably to demoralize their cornered prey. Skirting a clump of decrepit azalea, Sam suddenly asked, "What makes you different?"

Adrienne stopped and tilted her head, studying him carefully. "You'll have to be a bit more specific."

"How is your magic different from theirs?" he gestured to the barrier that kept them safe.

The witch didn't answer at first, instead kneeling to brush the dead leaves from a rosebush. "The most obvious answer," she began, "Is that they use their magic for what is known as evil, whereas I use mine for what is generally perceived as good, such as healing your injuries."

As if in response, Sam's skin that was once bound by ugly orange yarn tingled. "Perceived?"

She gave a little laugh. "I could argue ethics and morals all day with you. But let's just leave it at: they kill people for no reason at all, and I do not unless my life is threatened."

Sam wanted to ask more, but realized that the discussion would take them all day. She was on their side: that would have to do. And somehow, it _did _comfort him. "And the less obvious answer?"

"My magic is fueled by my own energy. Theirs runs off of deals with demons, which gives them powers sealed by blood spells." She jerked, raising a thorn-sliced finger for inspection. "Sometimes I pity them," she said softly, pulling a piece of thread from her pocket. "The underlings, the foot soldiers of the coven, really have no idea what price their power comes at. The Matriarchs keep them blind to the consequences of their deal until it is too late."

"The Matriarchs?"

"The three sister witches in charge of the coven. They're practically immortal, extremely strong physically and magically, and endlessly determined. The sound of their collective voice and the weight of their total gaze can mean death to some."

A particularly cold gust of wind blew up the back of Sam's shirt, chilling his spine. "How should we deal with them?"

She dragged the string in her hand through the blood welling on the tip of her finger, and began to tie it like a spiderweb on the rosebush. "You're not." With words stolen by the wind and a pluck of a pertinent strand, the rosebush's leaves turned a healthy shade of green. Buds began to swell on the stems, blooming the same color as the blood that gave them life.

"What do you mean, we're not?" asked Sam angrily.

"I mean, they're mine to deal with," she responded calmly, straightening. "I'm the only one who even has a prayer. Sending a hunter after a Matriarch would be homicide."

"We can handle ourselves," Sam replied tersely.

"What part of 'death-gaze' and 'voice-killing' don't you understand?" she growled. "They will kill you where you stand. No hesitation. You won't know what hit you."

"If there is one thing I can't stand," he said, turning away, shaking his head, "It's a martyr." He stalked away, and a moment later, the door to the house slammed shut.

Adrienne tore the string from the rosebush angrily, sending newly blackened leaves and brown petals scattering in the air.


	9. Chapter 9

By following the sound of a radio on the rock station and the ratcheting of a socket wrench, Adrienne found Bobby working on a Buick Century Regal with flecked paint in his garage. Announcing her presence with a cough made him wheel out from under the car, grease on his hands and a smudge on his face, above his beard. "You," he stated simply.

She nodded. "Me," she agreed.

The creeper disappeared back under the car, leaving only his scuffed boots showing. "Don't you have newts to de-tail?"

"Hilarious. Do they offer online classes in witch-centric wit?"

"Yeah. I'm Professor Studly. Look me up."

Adrienne had to snort at that, and she judged him sufficiently comfortable with her company to lean against the tire next to the toolbox.

"Where's your three nails and crown of thorns?" he asked from under the car.

"Sam talked to you, huh?" she asked, tilting her head against the cold metal of the Impala.

"Try railed at the world for its injustices. You know he has a thing for you, right?"

"Yeah," she sighed after a moment of realization. "I know."

Bobby wheeled out again to look her in the eye. "What do you mean, you know?"

Adrienne shrugged. "I know, and I can't do anything about it."

"That meek chick stuff went out with the nineteenth century."

"There is no future for us," she insisted. "So why bother?"

"You mean, there's no future for _you._"

Adrienne broke his gaze, eyes stinging.

"You don't even know if it is...like that," she said weakly. "He strikes me as the type to care about everyone to some degree."

Bobby sighed. "Yeah. He wears his heart on his sleeve sometimes."

"That's neither here nor there," she said dismissively. "In a few days I'll be gone, one way or another."

"It's that other way I want to talk to you about," he replied, ratcheting away. "Are you doing this because you want to die?" He asked it casually, but with an undertone of an honest question.

Adrienne scoffed. "No one wants to die. It's an unfortunate side affect of being human. Scat happens."

"Quit dodging," he said impatiently. "Do you _want_ to die?"

"No, Bobby," she replied with indignation. "I want to walk away from this, into the sunset, with my dog and my cat and my magic and preferably all my limbs. But I've come to the conclusion that that is too tall an order." There. She'd confessed she wasn't the World's Best Martyr, going to her grave with a smile.

"You know," he said, wheeling out again. "If you actually wanted to live, you'd be spending time figuring out ways to do that, instead of moping and preparing yourself for defeat."

She flew to her feet, fists clenched. "Shut up."

"If you wanted to live, you would be focusing on making it happen."

"Shut UP!"

"There it is," he muttered, pointing at her. "The fight. I was wondering where it'd scampered off to."

She stood there, trembling slightly in anger. Then, she tossed her hair with a _tch_. "You're an ass."

"Love you too, sugar pie," he said sarcastically. And he disappeared under the car again.

She took this as her dismissal. And loathe as she was to obey unvoiced orders, she stalked out of the garage. It felt really good to stomp her boots into the rain-soft earth and pretend it was the faces of everyone she was mad at. Stupid, stinking coven for chasing her all over creation. Stupid Sam, rocking her kamikaze boat. Stupid Bobby, for capsizing her kamikaze boat.

Stupid her, for believing she was good enough to save.

* * *

"Hey, Lurch, you're shaking the house," complained Dean from the kitchen table.

Adrienne muttered something with the mouth she used to kiss her (dead) mother and stomped past the doorway.

"Seriously, if you knock this stuff around, I'm gonna be reenacting Hiroshima," insisted Dean, leaning protectively over the things in front of him.

Adrienne poked her head around the corner, a suggestion about shoving his project into a not-nice orifice on her tongue, but curiosity usurped insult. "What are you doing?"

Dean extricated something from a kerosene lamp with tweezers and replied, "Making witch bombs. Two parts hate crime, one part boom."

Never one to miss an opportunity to sharpen her wit, she asked, "And where did you learn this technique, al-Qaeda kindergarten?"

"Nah. My dad, actually. But with my GED and give-em-hell attitude, I give it a certain flair." He glanced her way. "Wanna help?"

She snorted. "You mean, wanna tempt death?"

"Tomato, tomahto. You game or not?"

Adrienne paused, eyeing the lamp and the various other bomb building ingredients in front of him. The kitchen was quiet for a long moment. "Yeah," she said softly. "I'm game."

Two minutes later, she was pouring a solution of salt dissolved in holy water into a funnel which he held over a glass bourbon bottle. He was theatrically shaking it, nearly splashing her. "Quit," she said sternly, trying not to smile.

He dipped his finger into it and flicked it in her face.

"Ah, my eye! Jerk! God, that's salt, ow!" She rubbed her teary eyes.

"A little salt is good for the health. I see it doesn't work on witches like you."

"I'm a good witch, Dean. Therefore, I do not sizzle with salt."

"Hey, I only got one of your eyes, you know."

"I'm not crying," she insisted, swiping her face with a sleeve. "Darn coven's getting my allergies stirred up with the wind outside."

He adopted an American Indian accent, "Salt is strong medicine, Rhymes-With-Kit."

"Whatever you say, Born-In-Toilet."

"Ooh, burn me, why don't ya?"

"You get the lighter, I'll get the petrol," she said, batting her eyes.

"Gotta catch me first."

"Nah. I got the dog for that. Why do you think I named him Hannibal?"

"Forget the dog: that cat would slit your throat if it had opposable thumbs."

"Too true, too true."

Dean tapped some salt into a cup and Adrienne added the right amount of holy water, stirring it intently with a silver spoon. Unseen by her, Dean's face softened just a fraction. "Just so we're clear," he said, half-grinning, "It's my brother with the goo-goo eyes, not me."

"Well, Dean," Adrienne said, leaning forward slightly with a patronizing smile. "I'd expect nothing less." She'd never had the misconception. He was fun to talk with, and even fun to argue with, but Dean Winchester was not Prospective Mate material. Adrienne could tell his heart was already taken, just by peeking sideways at his aura.

"Good," he replied, his grin turning into a full smirk. "Because a witch who specializes in rope tricks can probably turn all kinds of kinky in a hurry..."

"You idiot. Think with you're upstairs brain for once."

They were still laughing when night fell and the bombs were done.

Sam wandered into the kitchen as they cleaned up and carefully transferred the bombs to a duffel bag. He had to fight down the stab of jealousy that struck his heart blindside. Coolly, he swigged his beer and thought with introspective resignedness_, Why am I crushing so hard on a witch?_

And more importantly, why was she sneaking looks at him?

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**Okay, that conversation with Dean was a little (a lot) OOC. But I don't care. Creative license, let's call it. They're just harmlessly flirting. They're both sharp-witted and enjoy verbal sparring. Dean's beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, the witch is alright. Her winning personality is getting to him. **

**Recap: Bobby is a little ticked that she was so willing to jump in front of a bus. He thinks she's worth much more than that. Sam is trying to make sense of his strange attraction to her.**

**Scat is gonna hit the fan in the next chapter. Stay tuned to your CB radio for more updates...  
**


	10. Chapter 10

The Plan was to get a good night's sleep and recharge for the next night's raid (or banzai run). In response, the coven turned up the amperage on their storm making, determined to wear them down through exhaustion, starvation, and fear.

"I've had it up to _here_." growled Adrienne, making a motion at eye level. "Damn thunder's keeping me awake."

The three hunters looked up at the witch framed by the study door. Looking as though she had risen from a coroner's table, she flinched as another peal rattled the picture frames.

"We gave up on sleep, too," Dean said, tamping gunpowder into a large-caliber round. The candlelight flickered over his face.

"The thunder ain't gonna stop," said Bobby, turning a page. "Why don't you stay in here with us?"

Adrienne scrubbed her face, cleared her lungs, and plunked down on the same couch Sam occupied with a sleepy scowl.

"The lights don't work," she groused sullenly.

An observant individual could pick up on the bemused ghost of a smile on Sam's face. "'S just inconvenient, that's all."

She wriggled madly, intent on getting every toe under the blanket. "I don't like storms," she murmured.

Sam glanced sideways at her, watching her body tense between the lightning and thunder. "Why's that?"

Her brow furrowed. "It's like...I have no chance of controlling it. I'm at it's mercy. If the lightening strikes me, I can't stop it. And if it doesn't, the thunder rattles me here," she placed a hand over her heart. "When I'm traveling, I'm so unprotected. Just a tarp between me and the storm. I never thought it would be worse in a sturdy house."

"Yeah," said Sam. "There is something uneasy about it." There was a crack of a tree branch killed in cold blood. Adrienne's fingers tightened on the blanket as the thunder answered.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam crook one arm. A turn of her head confirmed that yes, he was inviting her into his embrace. Adrienne's cynical side questioned if a mere human's embrace was worth her dignity, or if it was even a reasonably sound protection. But the next, _this close_ strike-flash-BOOM found her stuck to Sam's side like a tick with saucer-sized eyes.

God, he was so freakin' warm, like an old-fashioned wood stove that held heat for hours. And he smelled fantastic, like hygiene and fresh laundry. His chest rumbled under her ear to rival the thunder as he folded down the arm, like a mother hen protecting a chick. "Not a word," Adrienne growled, skewering Dean with her eyes from across the room. The older Winchester just smirked, flicked his eyes to Sam's in that silent brother language, and went back to making bullets.

Arranging the blanket, she pulled a stray pillow into Sam's lap, and she was asleep before her head touched it. Beta waves descended as she gave a sleepy purr, snuggling against his thigh.

After a few minutes of her quiet, snuffly snores, Bobby snickered. "He's the witch-whisperer."

Dean rocked silently in mirth, and Sam flipped them both off with his free arm without vehemence. He couldn't muster the care, because at that moment, his heart was throbbing with happiness, borderline joy. Picking a strand of hair out of her nose's path encouraged the strangest feeling of possessiveness and protection he'd ever felt, so different from that he felt for Dean and Bobby. God, this witch was crazy for taking a shining to him, stupid for opening her heart to him, beautiful for her casual, unintentional little seductions, and so incredibly, irrevocably, achingly beyond his grasp.

But...

For right now...

She could sleep soundly amidst the storm, her peaceful breathing like a metronome beat to his heart's sonata.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**Holy crap, I'm sooooo sorry, lovers of the story, for the atrocious delay. *kow-tow, kow-tow* I've been struggling lately, but I refuse to let those struggles steal my thunder. I'm bringing the rain in the next few chapters, and not everyone comes out in one piece...**


	11. Chapter 11

**I dedicate this chapter to SPN Mum, for giving me a swift (yet so polite) kick in the kiester.**

* * *

It was a miracle, but eventually the hindbrains of all the hunters won out. They succumbed in turn to the sandman, and caught a few hours of accidental shut-eye.

Thunder rolled, lightening veined, witches laughed and plotted.

Bobby was the first to jerk out of sleep. After the perfunctory post-nightmare sweep of the room, his eyes softened at the kids' positions. Sam's head was propped up on the back of the couch, and in his lap Adrienne's eyes were clearing of the fog of slumber. A slight movement of her head made him bolt upright, hand reaching to his empty waistband. As though by telepathy, Dean repeated the movement from a dead sleep, except ending with a real gun. Like some kind of Poe spinoff, his motions were punctuated by a loud thunderclap.

"We fell asleep?" muttered Dean incredulously, unapologetically returning the gun to his belt.

Sam scratched his beard. "Looks like."

"We all needed it," Bobby said, groaning to his feet. "I'll make coffee."

Adrienne whipped off the blanket and fairly bolted to join him, not looking back at Sam.

Dean snickered at Sam. "You're hopeless."

"Don't be jealous, bro," replied the younger Winchester, tearing his eyes from where she'd disappeared.

"As if. Recap: witch plus Dean equals fun with a shotgun."

Adrienne leaned against the countertop and tried to reconcile her flying heart and her breath. When she'd woken up in Sam's lap, she'd panicked,searching her memory, looking for sweaty bodies and hot, wet breath. Reality was both kinder and crueler than her imaginings. Shrugging off the feeling uneasily, she watched Bobby sweet talk the coffee maker.

"Come on, baby. Work for me. One more time, then you can rest, promise." He drummed his fingers on the side, and the machine heaved to life. "That's a good girl."

Adrienne shook her head, messy hair swinging. "You're the real magician here."

"If experience gives you magic, then yeah, I am." Bobby propped up across from her. "So you and the boy still on eggshells?"

"Yeah." Adrienne picked at the hem of her nightshirt. "And that's how it'll have to stay." The "-unfortunately." was left off the end of the sentence for the benefit of her scruples.

"So long as it don't interfere with the hunt," reminded Bobby in his gruff but gentle way.

"Of course not." She sounded lame, even to her own ears.

"Morning, Cousin Itt," said Dean as he sauntered into the kitchen.

"Does your repertoire of jokes only span Addams Family references?" cooed Adrienne in return, surreptitiously coiling the loose thread at her hem around her fingers.

"Sasquatch is already taken by this one," Dean replied, thumbing over his shoulder as Sam entered behind him. Sam's gaze searched for Adrienne's and they skittered off each other. Adrienne whispered a word and a small electrical spark arced to zap Dean's butt. The older hunted gave a very unmanly yelp and had to be assisted out of the room by his laughing brother. Adrienne sniggered into her coffee the entire morning.

Adrienne gave a mass download of everything she knew about the coven after foraging through the sparse pantry. "There are three sisters, formally known to other witches as the Matriarchs. No one really knows how old they are, or their origin. But anyone with sense agrees: they're BAMFs with a voracious appetite for blood and new magic."

"Like yours," affirmed Sam, casually reasserting the right to speak to her.

"Blood like literally or figuratively?" queried Dean.

"Literally. Their magic is based on blood, and it gives them each unique powers: Agnes has the power of fire, and channels the element using her voice. Verity consults stars and tarot cards, and by them she can control the weather."

"She's the one responsible for the storm," guessed Bobby.

"And Sarai, their leader, is the worst of them all. She kills with her voice."

"Just like, boom, you're dead?" asked Dean.

Adrienne nodded soberly. "Boom. You're dead."

The room fell silent, save for Verity's power wailing at the windows, rebuffed by the sigils.

Bobby gave a baffled shrug. "How are we supposed to defeat them?"

"I have a plan, but you aren't going to like it."

Thirty seconds later, her prediction came true.

"It. Ain't. Gonna. Happen," ground out Bobby.

"I'm fine with ganking a witch," said Dean tersely. "But a hunter should be the one to take out Boom-chica-chica, not you."

Adrienne put aside her urge to face-palm at his reference. "I won't be alone. I'll have Bobby. He'll be the one doing the ganking of Boom-chica-whatever. So will you and Sam." She stood and retrieved her bag, withdrawing a carton of thumbtacks. "If Hannibal goes with you, Sam, and Hex goes with Dean, each of you hunters will have a magical shield. Someone has to deflect or absorb the attacks of the sisters long enough for you guys to kill them."

"I get that, but a mangy cat and a dog?" said Dean incredulously.

Hannibal, who had been laying in front of the front door watching them, growled.

"They're not just a cat and a dog, Dean," said Adrienne in exasperation. Reaching to her scalp, she began to systematically pluck long, blonde hairs. "They're familiars. They're storage units for my power, extensions of my magic. All I have to do is bind them to you, and free their true forms."

"Uh, true forms?" echoed Bobby. "Ah, hell. What can I do to help?"

"Just clear the floor a bit, thanks."

"Fine. My only real problem is that I doubt they have the sense to - " Dean was cut off by Hex leaping slinkily into his lap. The cat put his paws on Dean's chest, staring directly into the hunter's eyes. The eyes glittered with the blue light of magic. He touched his cool, dry nose to Dean's, who gasped and tensed mightily.

"Shoo, get, scamper!" waved Sam. The cat ignored him, instead settling on the back of Dean's chair like a living frock.

"I just heard him say my name. In my head," said Dean hoarsely. "He understands us, alright. Nice kitty?"

The black cat purred and whisker-tickled Dean's ear, causing the hunter to tense further

"Hex is willing to lend you his strength," translated Adrienne, wincing as she continued to pluck her hair.

"Looks like you have a friend, bro!" sniggered Sam. Hannibal sauntered over to Sam, nails clicking on the hardwood floors. He put his heavy paws on Sam's thighs, who was expecting the nose touch and wrinkled his face at the cold, wet texture. "Ugh, yuck!"

_Samuel...let me help you save my mistress. _

Sam broke contact and exhaled shakily.

"See, it is creepy!" said Dean. The dog wagged his tail once and sat at Sam's feet, ears pricked towards Adrienne, who was carefully thumbtacking her strands of hair to the floor in an intricate hexagonal pattern. "Thanks for loaning me your floor, Bobby," the witch said jokingly.

"Trust me, much worse things have been done to this floor," quipped the eldest hunter.

From Dean's shoulder, the cat watched raptly, eyes glittering. The dog, knowing what was coming, whined a little. "Almost done, boy," she said, looking up to smile at Hannibal. Sam's heart leapt as she transferred the smile to him, as well. With a final tack, she sat back on her heels. "Can I borrow your knife?" she asked Sam.

He guessed her intent. "It's supposed to kill anything supernatural. You sure that's safe?"

"I've told you, my magic is different," Adrienne said confidently.

Sam handed it to her hilt first over the dog's head, and winced sympathetically as she added another scar to her hand. She hissed. "It wants to _burn_ the magic from my blood. If you use this to kill a Matriarch, she'll die permanently."

"What else has the juice to kill a Matriarch?" asked Dean, watching her daub blood at the junction of each thumbtack.

"If you let me mess with a couple of shotguns and some iron rounds, I could have 'em battle-ready by matchtime," Adrienne replied, kneeing before the cat, who extended a paw. Locking eyes, Adrienne cut him neatly, dripping blood on his head and then on Dean's forehead. She repeated the process with the dog, and then pressed one reddened fingertip to Sam's forehead. Adrienne scrutinized Sam with hooded eyes as she touched him, feeling that same tingle as when she did magic.

"Hannibal, Hex." The animals moved with surety to two points of the hexagon. "Fellas, put your right hands on the blood mark on their foreheads, and the left on your own marks."

Adrienne knelt at her equidistant corner, dotting her forehead, then Bobby's, and motioned to Bobby to adopt the same position.

"This is way beyond my pay grade," muttered Bobby, readjusting his cap and uncomfortably putting a hand on Adrienne's head. She grinned impishly and moved his fingers up, so she could see the group.

"Hold on to your hats, boys." And Adrienne began to chant.


	12. Chapter 12

The maelstrom of magic fog and light rose in a low spiral around them, the strands of thumbtacked hair glowing silver. Adrienne's indiscernible words buzzed against Sam, Dean, and Bobby's ears and swirled in their minds. Syllables whispered, overtones growled, and words slithered from Adrienne's mouth. In a rising crescendo of ultimatum, her tongue into sprang civility:

_"By blood and magic, I thread and bind_,

_"Power to human, each in kind,_

_"Life of one, for another,_

_"Living shield, surrogate brother."_

The blood marks on the magical beings' foreheads lit with blue, ethereal light that darted up the hunter's arms and to their own brows. More than one tried to pull away under sheer instinct, but the magic held them fast.

Adrienne continued:

_"Creatures of power hear my cry,_

_"Let your bodies no longer lie,_

_"Cat of my sorrow, show me your form,_

_"Future things you must inform - "_

The cat under Dean's hand began to shake, then absolutely _vibrate. _Electricity sparked along his whiskers._  
_

_"Dog of my anger, dedicate your might  
_

_"And show evil your burning bite!"_

The dog let out a howl that shattered a two windows in the room. Sam shut his eyes, sure that he was about to die_. _In a massive exodus of air and cold from the room, he felt the magic influx...and then the place was still. When Sam opened his eyes, his hand had raised a couple of feet, and Adrienne was smiling with ferocity. "There are my boys," she snarled victoriously, wiping at her nosebleed.

Very quickly, the Winchesters removed their hands from the animals that were no longer of this world. Before Sam stood a very muscular German Shepherd-with-a-twist up to his waist. The dog's ears had an odd spiral to them, and his fur was tinged red. Even as the humans watched, fire flowed down his tail and heat began to ripple the air above him. "Hannibal?" said Sam, stretching out a hand. The dog turned to press his head into Sam's palm, not burning but pleasantly warm. _Samuel, _the voice echoed in his mind. _As one, we shall protect Adrienne. _The eyes glowed like banked coals.

"Damn, Hex," breathed Dean. The cat was at least as big as the dog. It was sleekly coated in bright white fur striped with thick black. His coat shortened into nonexistence as it neared the creature's ears. These ears were deep pink, borderline crimson, and they swiveled towards Dean's voice. Hex bared is fangs, huffing scent-filled air over Dean's hand, and appearing satisfied rested his chin on the hunter's palm. _Dean, _rang the voice. _We shall hunt together. _

Bobby was helping an unsteady Adrienne to her feet. "That...was...massive," she panted. "I'd forgotten how hard that spell is."

"Are you gonna be able to fight?" asked Bobby, securing her shoulders.

Her ferocious smile returned. "Wild horses couldn't keep me away." The smile softened as she watched Sam and Dean take in her familiars. "But I think a cup of tea is in order."

* * *

The storm outside finally stopped. In fact, it seemed to have stopped right as the windows blew under the force of Hannibal's howl. While Bobby boarded them up, Adrienne procured an array of gunsmithing tools from the drawers and three shotguns from the armoire. "They heard Hannibal's howl," Adrienne said, rubbing her temples exhaustedly. "I guess they got their answer: they know we're planning on fighting."

"It don't change a thing," gruffed Bobby. "We'll kill them, and you'll be safe."

Adrienne smiled bitterly. "I wish I hadn't put you three in harm's way." She turned misty eyes on Sam and Dean as they emptied their hands of ammo boxes. "I'm so sor - "

"Stop! Hold it!" cried Dean, covering her mouth. "We never say sorry before a fight. It's like saying we're gonna die."

Adrienne nose twitched as she sighed over his pinkie, and she nodded. "If I may have my bag, please," she said once the hand had been removed. Sam acquiesced and watched her rummage. "What can we do?"

She glanced up at him. "If you guys could jinx the ammo, I can get the guns done."

"Jinx?" echoed Dean. "I think I'm full-up of ju-ju today."

"I kind of made up the term," Adrienne continued. "No magic." She withdrew a few packets of dried herbs.

"No thanks: I like to drink my sins," quipped Dean.

She glared at him like a bear woken from hibernation. "Just mix the herbs."

Sam and Dean set about mixing holly ash, angelica, and rosemary in a bronze bowl, then opening each buckshot shell and putting a pinch inside. "And you say this stuff works?" Sam asked dubiously.

"I've used this mix as a blade dip, and it works wonderfully," replied the witch. "Slows 'em down, and speeds up the kill."

"So you've had to kill other witches before," inferred Dean.

Adrienne's face grew pensive. "Yes. I have." She said no more. After an awkward moment of quiet, in which Bobby coughed on his booze and the scraping of metal tools on plastic was heard, Sam studied her. _She's had a tough life, _he realized._ And with this new magic, it only got tougher._

He wasn't expecting the dog to overhear him. _Astute observation, _replied Hannibal from under the table, where he warmed their feet. _Mistress is kind and gentle whenever she can be, but fate is cruel to her. She will forever be hunted. _

Sam's face grew hard. _Not this time._

"Gettin' the hang of it?" Adrienne broke his thoughts.

"You mean talking mentally to Hannibal? Yeah. He sounds seriously old."

"He is, in a way. He's got the knowledge of every canine witch's familiar that has died before him."

"Same for Hex?" asked Dean, trying not to be interested.

"Every feline familiar, yep."

"Hmph," grunted Bobby. "Must be nice to know all that stuff."

_It is, _murmured Hex in Dean's head, making him flinch. The cat put his head on the hunter's lap. _Scratch my cheek, _he implored. Gingerly, Dean did so, and the cat began to purr.

"Hey, Adrienne," said Bobby. "I gotta talk with you. In private."

The witch looked like she'd been expecting this, and dreading it. "'Kay." She followed him down the hall into a bedroom.

"That last part of the binding ritual," began Bobby. "Just what does 'living shield' mean?"

Adrienne looked uncomfortable. The blood mark was still on her brow, puckering with the knit of it. "It means that whenever you take a hit, it shows only on me."

Bobby swore, striding angrily to the window. "Adrienne, reverse it."

"No."

"Reverse it."

_"No."_ She folded her arms stubbornly. "I can't without undoing the boys' bonds, too."

Bobby's postured was livid, tight.

"I did it to protect you," she continued, eyes tearing. "You're the closest thing I have to family, and if something happened to you..." She let the tears fall. "Please say something!"

"What happens when I'm hit too hard?" came the quiet reply.

"Then I die, and the spell is broken."

Bobby scrubbed his face despondently. "I don't believe this. I could _kill _you, Adrienne."

"But that won't happen," she said, voice pained. "You're a hunter. And you're the best I know."

He walked back over to her, gathering her against his shoulder. "I get it." She proceeded to wet his shirt, shaking with silent sobs. "Please forgive me," she whispered.

"Already have, little lady."

Eventually she dried her eyes and disconnected herself from him. "The boys..."

"I got it. Get presentable." And he left the room, cracking the door.

Adrienne wandered to the adjacent bathroom and bent over the sink, splashing cool water on her face from the tap. When she looked up for a towel, there stood Sam in the mirror's reflection. "Hey," she said, a little croakily. "What's up - "

Sam put his hands on the sink, framing her with his arms. With searching eyes, he slowly leaned closer.

Adrienne's heart pounded. Instinctively, she closed her eyes.

His lips met hers with utter gentleness. The delicacy of the touch belayed the flush of _heat _that ran up her body. With a quiet moan, she tilted her head and opened her mouth to his explorative tongue. His answering growl and strong, long arms swept her away.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**You likey, you likey?  
**

**I got my inspiration for Hex's true form from Maneki Neko, aka the Japanese waving cat of luck, fortune, and prophecy. I got Hannibal's form from Kimat, the Philippine dog of lightening. **


	13. Chapter 13

Sam's lips escalated to just _this side_ of hungry, and his large, burning palms found the back of Adrienne's thighs. As though coordinated, she bounced as he lifted, and she ended up sitting on the sink.

From here Sam backed down to a simmer, running lazy circles around her back, testing the firmness of her legs, perusing the inside of her mouth, teasing her ribs in that maddeningly slow, ticklish way. It felt like a test of her sanity, which was spending fast. Her hands twisted in the shoulders of his shirt. Perhaps it was a test of his.

But oxygen was conducive to life. She broke the kiss and their noses balanced on each other, air exchanged. Adrienne could feel how hot her face was: she could only imagine how red it was. Sam's eyes wavered between closing in correlation to his pleased smile and seemingly puncturing hers with their heat.

He didn't give her time to speak: once her breath was retrieved, he closed in again. She surrendered to the ebb and flow of lips and tongue, casting off her nebulous, negating thoughts. They deserved this. In a matter of hours they would be facing death. It was better to get it out of their systems now, rather than risk unfulfillment. She would think about the later, later.

Adrienne wondered how long it would take her to snap, at his current rate. In his huge hands she was the merest putty: surging to meet his touch and missing it when it left to trail fire elsewhere. When his lips met her neck wetly, she gasped, unconsciously cradling the back of his head. Her newly freed mouth stretched in an _O_ of delirious surprise, and her body arched without her consent. Like a vampire he tugged with permissible insistence on her hair, exposing more of her throat. She had never heard _that_ sound pass her lips.

In response, he made a ravenous noise. His teeth caught the tendon that terminated between her collarbones and followed it, seeking that curious pulsing triangle of skin just outside of it. Once found, he deemed it his heart's desire to test the strength of her skin, causing her to whimper in the pleasure and pain mixing so violently inside of her. Her body contained a storm, a splitting atom, a soul aching for contact...

It was too much. "Wait," Adrienne murmured, rising from the mists. "Wait. Slow down."

He retreated enough to look her in the eye. He didn't ask what was wrong: he knew everything was so very right, judging by the wrecked look about her (it secretly pleased him that he was the cause of that hunger so evident on her face). No - he didn't say anything. He conjured patience, and waited for her to tell him.

"I can't...go further," she whispered, half shamed and half apologetically. "I'm sorry, that's not being true to myself."

Sam framed her once again with his arms, trying to listen, read between the lines.

"I...like you," she continued, leaning into the cold mirror, desperate to find space between them for her words to fit. "But I can't...I can't..." her eyes misted in embarrassment. "I'm sorry if I got your hopes up."

"Don't be," Sam replied, voice deep. "I knew what I was getting into." His fingers found her elbow and ghosted down to tangle with hers. "Hey, what's the rule? No sorries," he chided.

Adrienne snort-laughed once. It did not fail to delight him. "Fine, how about this: when we win this fight, let's say...we figure this out, one way or another?"

Sam nodded, face determined. "For sure."

"And maybe...encore?"

His grin was wolfish. "Sure."

She shivered at his voice, and again in the wake of his retreat. To her vulnerable heart, his absence from her personal space was too sudden. "Sam!" she said suddenly, like he was fixing to leave and never come back. She hopped down off the sink, and outlined his strong jaw in her hands. As though pre-ordained, they slid into embrace.

To him, she smelled faintly of cinnamon and lavender. He buried his nose in the varying locks, and for good measure, one hand. The curve of her spine drew the touch of the other. She felt as natural against his body as the leather of the Impala. With a roil of his heart, her realized he didn't want her to leave. Ever.

Adrienne closed her eyes, letting his warmth seep into her. His chest was hard. Her ear lay over his lungs. He felt safe as the ground under her feet, normal as the magic at her center.

To the traveling witch, he felt like the home she never had.

* * *

They reentered the library at four. T-minus two hours and 36 minutes until sundown, when they would launch their attack.

"Call me a glass-half-empty kind of guy," started Dean mildly. "But those guns aren't gonna jinx themselves."

Adrienne sought and tangled with Sam's fingers briefly, then stepped forward. "I'm not jinxing the guns."

"What?" Sam's brow wrinkled.

"I'm gonna need to put some serious mojo on them. And that's gonna require something better than string or hair." Adrienne extracted a series of wooden cogs and sticks from her bag and began to assemble them confidently. "I'll need to handspin the thread."

Dean burst into laughter. "I knew witches were spinsters!"

Bobby smacked the back of his head. "Time's ticking."

"I know," she said as she began to assemble the spinning wheel. "I can do it."

Slapping her thigh, Hannibal and Hex took up position on either side of their seated mistress. Reaching deep into their coats, the witch pulled out thick tufts of fur. The animals made no sound. With a complicated twist of her deft fingers and an insistent tap of her right foot on the pedal, the wheel began to spin the fur onto a bobbin."

"We're in business," Adrienne crowed. Keeping time with her foot, she raked her hands through Hex's coat. The cat's spine arched with enjoyment.

This continued for some time. The tap, tap of her foot and the swiftness of her fingers seemed to envelope the room in a atmosphere of anticipation, but peace. The hunters quietly, calmly continued their preparations: field stripping weapons, loading light carrying bags with witch bombs, spare guns and ammo, eating tins of pork 'n' beans from the farthest reaches of the pantry. It was almost as if there wasn't an impending battle to the death. As if they had all the time in the world.

The spell of serenity broke with the cadence of Adrienne's foot. She removed the now-full bobbin of string from the wheel and began to knot it intricately. "Sam, put your finger here."

The younger hunter acquiesced to this and repeated it twice more. The symbols she wrought looked Celtic and pagan, and she laid each gun on top of one.

"They look like potholders," grumbled Dean, arms folded as he watched his ga-ga brother help her. "And the critters look like geriatric cancer patients."

"I am not even going to dignify that statement with a response," replied Adrienne coolly. "Watch and learn, Bobby," she said, a grin growing on her face. "So easy, even a hunter can do it!"

"Har-larious," replied Bobby, rolling his eyes.

Adrienne murmured coaxingly to the knots, touching them with a single fingertip. As she did, the knot began to unthread itself, slither onto the buttstock of the gun, and imbed itself in the wood in the same pattern.

Bobby hefted the weapon, caressing the new symbol. "Oh, that's sexy," he groaned.

"Tell me about it," joined Dean with a worshipful tone. "I love girls with tatts."

"Mmm-mm," said Sam, sighting the barrel. "Would you look at that."

Adrienne laughed. "If you're done eye-fornicating your weapons, sunset approaches."

"Right."

They assembled at the front door. Hannibal and Hex flanked their battle partners, and Adrienne touched Bobby's shoulder to alert him to her position.

"What's the purpose of sunset again?" queried Dean.

"It'll make it easier for us to sneak up on them," responded Adrienne.

"Classic," deadpanned Bobby. "And I mean 'Brady Bunch' classic, not 'Walker, Texas Ranger'."

"Don't forget: there'll be familiars and their masters running around. They're the Matriarchs' footsoldiers, and if you encounter them, it means you're getting close."

"Terrific," snarked Dean. "And the plan still stands: we each take a sister. Sam, you take Hot Stuff, I take Gambit, and you and Bobby take Boom-chica-chica."

Adrienne fought down her hysterical laugh. "Yep. Follow your magical partner: they'll lead you to your intended target. Fellas, there is no fall back, no cavalry, and certainly no second chances. Pick your shots and give 'em hell."

"Thirty seconds," muttered Bobby.

Adrienne quickly secured coils of various sizes and materials along her waist, threading a spell onto her fingers with practiced ease. "You ready?" she asked Sam.

His eyes flicked to hers. "As I'll ever be," he replied, steely-eyed.

"Ten seconds."

"Whatever happens," Adrienne said. "Come back to me. I hate unfinished business."

His face softened just a little. "I will."

"Go go GO!"

The door burst open, and the three pairs parted ways quickly. Adrienne and Bobby booked it for the woods. The last the witch saw of her fellow hunters was a flash of a fiery tail, and the gleam of shotgun.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**Phew! *fans face* Steamy!Sam is a bit of a handful. I'm glad to offer him to ya'll, though.  
**

**BTW, Dean calls Verity Gambit after a character from the X-men movies/comics. In case you're not comic fans. :)**

**Will the hunters become the hunted? Will they get their witch? Pray for mercy from the pen of Kepouros!**


	14. Chapter 14

Nighttime descended on Adrienne and Bobby as the trees welcomed them into their embrace. The cool air whipped by the witch's ears and sawed in and out of her lungs.

Oxygen bonding to red bloodcells diffused through her capillaries. Magic physically binding her to Bobby, to her eye a series of evanescent threads between them, floated and reformed with each movement. It tightened her jaw when she thought of the pain that would soon course down those lovely threads and into her body, the consequences of the spell, but her constitution was metallic with doggedness.

_Living shield, surrogate brother._ She felt the oddest mixture of seriousness and hysteria, almost out-of-body. She felt scared, but unshakably tenacious.

Her body was strong, lithe. Her senses saw the individual leaves, felt the brush of each molecule of humidity, smelled the decaying detritus and divined the traces of old blood on the air that signified their quarry. Her power flitted down her nerve endings in sweet pulses, seeking an escape from her carefully reined willpower.

It wanted out.

She was hunting.

Bobby was not as young as he used to be, but he was neither old nor slow. He paced and slightly overtook Adrienne in stride, shotgun clenched tightly in one hand and a witch bomb in the other.

His heart rate was steady, his boots beating time with his breath. Parts of his perception opened wide in response to the adrenaline dumped into his bloodstream, gifting him with extended senses. In him burned that purpose men cross oceans and continents for, and spend their entire lives seeking. That purpose drove him: irrevocably, eternally.

He was hunting.

They ran a half mile before she said, "Stop." She pulled a thin band of handspun from her belt. "I can smell her, them," she whispered, scarcely a sound in this odd fishbowl of a forest. "Time to implement phase one." She tied the string around his forehead tightly, lips barely moving as she cast the spell.

Suddenly, Bobby was left completely without his adrenaline-amplified hearing._ Testing, one-two-three, _he called mentally, finally using the mental link that also bound the Winchesters to their animal partners._  
_

_Read you. We're on silent from now on. _

From here they stalked quietly through the woods. Adrienne could tell the lack of hearing affected Bobby deeply. His head was practically on a swivel. It was a risk, forcing him to rely on her ears, but it was the only way to keep his heart from stopping at the sound of Sarai's voice. Adrienne had taken her own precautions, unbeknownst to the hunters (who would only protest her grimly realistic expectations).

_Now _I _can smell 'em, too, _thought Bobby pointedly.

_Getting closer, _she agreed, jerked from her dim future. They slowed almost to a crawl.

Bobby spotted the first witch just as he spotted them. As the man opened his mouth to yell and raised a blood-dipped hand from the dead rat in his grasp, Bobby's witch bomb splattered on his chest. It burned through his skin, pectorals, ribs, and lungs faster than white phosphorus, leaving a gruesome, bloody 3/4 fraction of a human.

_Damn, _thought Bobby and Adrienne at the same time. After concurring on Dean's Unibomber potential, they took a few cautious steps.

Not cautious enough.

With an enraged hiss, the witch's snake familiar reared up as tall as a man before them, it's scaly hood flaring wide. Adrienne jumped forward, heart in her throat and a spell on her fingers. She caught the snake's strike at her face in the web of it. Gritting her teeth, she stared down its pink, flexing throat as it's venom-slick, hand-length fangs chomped at her. At her spoken urge, the threadspell cleanly sliced through its jaw and head like razor string.

Its body fell writhing to the ground. They stepped over it and moved on.

_That was a scout, _Bobby thought to Adrienne. _We found 'em: now we've gotta follow the trail of ants to the queen._

Adrienne nodded in agreement, then wondered how Sam and Dean were doing. Guiltily, she looked to see if she had accidentally projected her worry. If the old hunter shared her concern, he did not show it.

* * *

Dean could see the Hex's smooth, lion-like gait out of the corner of his eye. The creature's determination of stride eliminated any anxiety about their destination.

The cat was hunting.

_The scent of their blood-magic is strong on the air, _echoed Hex's voice in his mind.

_Blood, nothin', _countered Dean. _I can see 'em. _

As one, like a coordinated pack, the hunter and the cat flanked the guarding witch and familiar in the dark and scraggly underbrush.

As one, they leaped.

Dean commando-sprinted out of the bushes, trying to match the ground-eating stride of the cat bursting forth from the other side. The witch never stood a chance: Dean covered his mouth with one hand and buried his herb-dipped knife in his heart just in time to watch the cat snatch the crow familiar out of the air with one long-clawed paw. Hex snapped the bird's neck with a quiet, wet crack.

Dean felt the life fizzle out of the witch's body, and a scant amount of blood run down the knife. Sweet revelry.

He was hunting.

_This is way too easy, _he told the cat.

_Indeed, _the creature replied, rising from the bird carcass with black, bloody feathers sticking out of his mouth. _Let's hope Hannibal and Samuel aren't taking the brunt of the assault._

* * *

The hope was sadly placed. Sam and Hannibal were coming upon one noisy confrontation after another. Adrienne's words rang in Sam's head: _"They're going to have several scouts out," she informed the hunters as they studied a map on the table. "They're gonna be the first wave. We should try to sneak as close as possible before engaging the Matriarchs. The second wave, the minor witches, will be a stone's throw from the Matriarch, and it's a possibility that she will attack when you're tangling with them. Remember, these footsoldiers practice some nasty blood magic. Don't give them time to work a spell."_

As two witches charged them with twin wolf familiars, Sam lost all pretense of sneak. He lobbed a witch bomb at one of them, a female. It splattered on the ground in front of her, wrecking her legs and sending her shrieking to the ground. Her familiar literally howled with rage_, _until Hannibal's teeth closed on its windpipe. The second wolf came to the first's aid, sinking its teeth into Hannibal's haunch. Hannibal yelped into the scruff in his mouth, then flicked his flaming tail at the attacker, setting the wolf ablaze like a dry Christmas tree. It collapsed in a smoldering pile of stinking, burned fur moments later.

As he clashed with the second witch, Sam only heard the sounds of pained yelps, angry snarls, and colliding bodies: not all from the animals. He roared and swung his shotgun into the jaw of the he-witch, knocking him away long enough to aim down the sights and shoot.

If time had stilled long enough, Sam would have perceived the tiny, incandescent, spider-web-thin strands connecting each iron pellet of buckshot, and within this matrix, the suspended herbs and salt sparking with latent magic. Like so many razors, the threads of magic sliced through skin and bone and vital organs, competing with the buckshot for blood. What they left scarcely resembled a human corpse, at all.

Sam was just trying to figure out how to help Hannibal when he heard the triumphant cry of the witch on the ground. He turned in time to see her drawing symbols in the air with the blood from her crippled legs.

"Suck it, hunter!" she hissed. The symbols she drew blazed with red light in midair, and she flung them with all her might at Sam.

Sam ducked and rolled, cursing his slow, mortal frame. The spell clipped his ear, but he surprisingly did not register pain.

Hannibal unhinged his teeth from the now-dead wolf only to cry in pain as Adrienne's spell claimed its first wound. He bowed to the ground, pawing at the magically-induced injury, whining frantically.

Sam turned and coldly shot the she-witch, reducing her to pulp. "Hannibal, are you alright?" he asked tersely but concernedly, breaking the gun and reloading it.

_I'll be fine, _came the ground-out reply. The silhouette against the creature's flaming tail had only one ear. _We must move._

They didn't go ten steps before they met the five other pairs of witches and familiars that had heard the fight and charged at them from the trees.

Sam yelled and let his instincts take control. He removed limbs with the herbed knife until the dip ran thin, then he switched to the shotgun. He was a symphony of death, a dancer of destruction. Hannibal growled, snarled, clawed and snapped at the array of magical animals before him, taking them down two at a time under his ferocious paws. The dog was unbridled fury, undiluted animal power.

They were hunting.

They drowned amidst the violence and gore, resurfacing with bloody weapons and bloodier eyes that took in the bodies at their feet with wild, grotesque victory.

_I missed one, _said Hannibal, nose to the sky.

Sam looked up and watched helplessly as the bird familiar flapped into deeper forest.

"It's going to warn the sister," asserted Sam. "I bet Agnes knows we're coming now."

_The Matriarch is that way, not far, _said Hannibal, sniffing.

Sam gripped his knife, stained with crimson. "Then let's get her."_  
_

* * *

Adrienne snarled through the pain of Bobby's failed attempt to dodge a knife. A large cut opened up in her forearm and thick, moon-black blood flowed freely.

It was one thing to experience the cause of injury: it was another entirely to receive it by telegraph.

It pissed her off. Massively.

_Perfect, _she thought harshly, her fingers dragging through the fluid leaking from her body. A moment later, she shouted a series of clipped, just-out-of-understanding words. With the sound of the ancient language, the array in her hand lit, and Adrienne watched with morbid satisfaction as blood erupted from the mouth of the witch locked in combat with Bobby. Bobby broke her loosened grip on the gun she had tried to wrest from him and brought it to bear on her, finishing her off.

_They're getting meaner! _he called to Adrienne, who was whispering brokenly to the string tied over her bleeding arm.

_We're almost there, _she replied grimly. The tickle of knitting skin only served to remind her that much more pain was to come._  
_


	15. Chapter 15

"Okay, where the hell are they?" murmured Dean, slowly taking in the moon-splotched trees.

_They are moving in the same direction we are, _replied Hex, huffing the air. _They intend to make their stand around the Matriarch, that she may aid them._

Dean swore. "They must've been warned. Her tarot cards told her."

_It changes nothing, _stated the cat, licking the bleeding hole in his toe where a claw had been ripped out, courtesy of a bobcat familiar's death throes. _We will kill them all._

Dean's smile was feral. "Stick _that_ in your prophesy."

Hex loped off, his gait slightly uneven, and the hunter followed.

* * *

Sam and Hannibal did not have to run long: the Matriarch Agnes found them.

She stepped from behind a dead, brittle tree: black clothes billowing, a deathly smile on her sooty lips and smoke emanating from her mouth. They could not stop in time. With a flick of her hand, she set fire to the ground in a circle around them all, sealing their escape in a matter of seconds.

The duo knew that they could not afford hesitation. In an instant, they charged her, Hannibal's fiery gaze hellish and Sam's shotgun glinting.

With a laugh like a four-pack-a-day smoker, she plucked the dog out of midair with one hand and cast him against a blackened tree. With a pained yelp and a nasty bone crack, Hannibal's impact broke the trunk in half, but not before forcing Sam to crouch to avoid being struck. The dog was still as death.

"No!" cried Sam.

"I suppose it's just you and me, now," Agnes rasped, eyes blazing. She laughed at him brazenly as Sam ominously leveled the shotgun at her chest. "You think that a little gun can stop me? My power will melt it to your hand!"

Sam had no time to react. She raised a hand to fulfill her promise and the tsunami of flames surged over him. He could feel his clothes begin to burn. The hunter knew Hannibal was taking this punishment for him, on top of his own, and the thought infuriated him. Sam's eyes lost track of the Matriarch under the sudden assault of heat and light. With his last hope, he squeezed the trigger and prayed for two things: that Agnes had not moved, and the heat would not burn away the herbs and buckshot before they could do their work...

* * *

_Hellfire, Bobby! What are you doin' over there?_ shouted Adrienne mentally from her knees. Her body had sprung leaks all over like the stone Moses struck, and every time she lifted a hand from one of the cuts to ward off an attacker, another wound would appear.

_They just keep coming_! he yelled back. The lack of hearing was slowing his reaction time. Adrienne heard his fist impact something that gave way with a crack, and true to form, a few skids opened up on her knuckles.

A battle-shriek alerted Adrienne to another footsoldier's approach. With a growl of frustration, she spelled the weave in her hands and shoved it into the groin of the he-witch that reared back to kick her. His shriek was decidedly higher pitched, after that. Apparently, the bleed-out time from a genital removal was under a minute.

The evolution of the third hand was far too slow in coming. Adrienne's measly two hands could only apply pressure to the slice _just shy _of costing her a kidney, and wipe the persistent stream of blood from a head gash that blurred her vision. She knew now how the victims of scalp-takers felt.

Bobby was a machine, a most visceral manifestation of poetry in motion. He barely broke stride between witches, and they all fell in three or fewer movements of his knife and shotgun. There must have been a dozen of them, but thankfully, none strong enough to have familiars.

A quartet of the witches set their sights on Adrienne. "COME ON!" roared Adrienne, threading both hands and struggling to her feet. The pain was causing fury to flood her heart. She was beyond bloodthirsty: she wanted their fluids to mist her face and dye her skin. She wanted to rip the life from their eyes. "BRING IT!"

They tittered with laughter at her poor condition, fingers flicking through the blood of the various animal carcasses they held, trying to draw her attention. "The Matriarchs draw near to witness your deaths," sneered one, his hands dripping with blood from his dead rabbit.

"She commands us to keep you here," said the tallest, eyes glinting with malice.

"When she arrives, she will want your friend strung up in the air," continued another. "That she may shower in his blood and revel in his pain."

"And you will be sacrificed on an alter of your dead friends and familiars," laughed a female. "The Matriarchs will drink your blood and knowledge and power like the finest wine..."

Adrienne's vision tunneled with rage. She didn't realized she was stepping forward until Bobby's hand gripped her shoulder. Hard. _Stop. They're out of range,_ he said, panting. He must have finished his rounds.

"Not for me," she replied ferally.

"NOW!" The witches began to draw symbols in earnest, seeking to spell the duo in one fell swoop.

Adrienne changed the array in her hands, murmured her hate to it, and tossed it like a Frisbee.

The quartet was drawn together at the neck by the thin, glowing lasso. They might have had just enough time to register the bashing of their collective heads before the threadspell slipknotted, completely decapitating them all.

Bobby's hand dropped from her shoulder. _What'd they mean by Matriarchs, plural? You think one of the boys failed?_

_I refuse to believe that, _said Adrienne. With one breath, she began to cleanse her mind and prepare for the final confrontation. She could feel the Matriarch moving towards them now: an awful dread and a scent of coffins. _The minors can't know if the Matriarchs die. We'll know for certain in a few seconds if it's just Sarai left._

Automatically, they reloaded thread and buckshot, and stood facing the direction from which came the lead-gut feeling of hopelessness.

* * *

Dean and Hex were tearing through the underbrush for mere minutes, following the sound of thunder, until they found the Matriarch. Only a couple dozen feet away stood Verity, arms upstretched to the swirling, thundering heavens. Her guards were standing at her defense around her, wielding blades of all sorts and small, dead animals as their horrible, magic inkpots.

Dean hesitated, unsure of how to approach.

_Look out! _shouted Hex, beckoning with his paw.

Dean reacted automatically. As though drawn forward by the cat, he took two steps.

**BOOOM! **Lightening struck the ground right where he had been, causing him to stumble as the force of the strike threw him forward.

"Very good, hunter," cooed Verity, electricity sparking in her hair and the deep sleeves of her dress. "Though I was so looking forward to killing you first, it seems wonder-cat will have to die before you."

Hex jumped as only a cat could out of the path of the lightening bolt that was aimed at him. He had almost no time to rest, as a second bolt quickly followed. The cat yowled. Verity laughed as thunder split Dean's ears. "Take care of him!" she ordered the remnants of her guard, who rushed to deadly obedience.

Dean was too far away to take the shot. With a wicked determination, he began to systematically dispose of each minor witch. Hex had only a few seconds to live at the rate of the lightening bolts' rapidity, and Verity would no doubt glance Dean's way and realize his advancement soon.

The hunter was forced to waste precious moments on the minors. He ran out of time.

Verity spared a look Dean's way just as he finished the last footsoldier, and immediately brought down a whirlwind around him with a hand motion like ringing a bell pull.

Dean's eyes teared in the wind. He couldn't breathe in the vacuum, and it struck fear into him. Verity was going to lift him up and slam him to his death, or deprive him of air. Up until now, Dean had been a beast. Had he gotten this far, only to have the goal denied him? _Like hell! _he thought. He tried to aim the shotgun, but the barrel was whipped by a sudden current of air and the shot strayed.

That was his last shot. He was going to die.

"Nice try, hunter!" the evil witch sing-songed. In the vortex of her power, she made sure he could hear her quite clearly, as one hears the voice of the Grim Reaper. "But it's time for your pathetic life to - "

Dean wondered after a second why she didn't finish her sentence. He realized he could open his eyes, and even breath a little. The whirlwind was dying down. _What?_

A one-eared and limping Hannibal and a bloodstained Hex had Verity's arms in their mouths, stretching her uselessly like a bizarre crucifix. They wrestled her to the ground at the feet of Sam, who took careful and cold aim at her heart.

"Bet you didn't see this one coming," said the younger Winchester.

With the blast of the shotgun, the last of the wind died along with the second Matriarch, and Dean collapsed to the ground, coughing.

Sam dashed over and helped him to his feet. "You okay?"

"Yeah," croaked Dean, hacking. "Way to steal my thunder, Sam."


	16. Chapter 16

If agony could be inflicted upon an intact soul, it was inflicted with the mere approach of the witch Matriarch Sarai.

Bobby could see her lips moving, could even feel the squeeze of the magic on his heart, but he did not fall dead on the spot. Adrienne's headband warmed on his brow.

_Hey Adrienne, _said Bobby with an odd tone. _Not the best time to ask, but why don't you have any protection against her?_

_You're going to have to trust me, _she replied heavily. In order for her overall plan to work, she would not be needing protection.

Sarai's stride was leisurely, measured, powerful. Her gaze was black as a demon's. Her hands were empty, and her dress would have looked fitting on a cadaver. "I see you've taken precautions against me," said the Matriarch, stopping about six steps away, eyeing Bobby's lifeline. "Clever witch. But it only postpones the inevitable."

"We'll see about that," replied Adrienne coolly. Inside her, the magic of the Matriarch's voice felt like the mother of all cases of heartburn, and this was just casual smalltalk. Sweat broke out on her brow. She was weak from bloodloss and her adrenaline was running out fast. She wondered if she could finish this.

The gravity of the situation lent a faint tremble to her limbs. She had to follow through: for all their sakes.

Sarai's gaze shifted. "So that is threadspell," she murmured, watching the undulating currents of magic binding Bobby to Adrienne.

Adrienne lifted her chin. "That is the closest you will come to my power, witch: seeing it."

The Matriarch's smile was bone-chilling. "We'll see about that." Suddenly, her eyes lit up. "Tell me, Adrienne, why does your friend bear no mark of his fights, yet you are barely standing?" She laughed with understanding, and it was like babies crying and nails on a chalkboard. "Oh, I see! You bound yourself to him!" Chuckling, Sarai lifted a crooked arm.

The motion confused Adrienne for a crucial moment. _Duck! _she called, but it was too late.

Recognizing the summons, a large vulture swept out of the trees behind them, hooked Bobby's headband in it's talons, and alighted heavily on Sarai's elbow. "There, that's done," the Matriarch crooned, stroking the bird's breast.

Adrienne reached up to her scalp, touching tenderly the three stripes that Bobby had loaned her.

The evil witch laughed again. "This makes it much more fun!" The vulture took off, bearing the headband away. Sarai began to sing. The sound was reverberating. If speaking was Chinese water torture, then singing was waterboarding. Adrienne could literally see the ripple of sound coagulate around the witch's body. When the ripples streaked outward, Adrienne reacted without thinking.

She figured that taking the brunt of the attack was better than feeling it doubly. Adrienne stepped in front of Bobby and stretched out her arms as wide as she could, blocking him. Instantly, her vision blurred, and her limbs went numb even as they began to seize. A scream caught in her throat as Adrienne was knocked to her knees under the onslaught. Now Sarai had a perfect two-for-one shot at them, and that made Adrienne's pain tolerance eek away as she took punishment on two fronts. Dimly, she registered Bobby curse the witch, and the sound of a shotgun's firing pin landing on an empty chamber.

_Bobby, move, _begged Adrienne. Her joints felt like they were rotting. He couldn't feel the torment: he didn't know the only thing she needed...

_I've got a shot!_

_I can't take it... _Adrienne felt her jaw lock and tiny blood vessels burst in her face. She couldn't speak any spell, couldn't think straight enough to find her magic.

The pain lessened as Sarai switched to speaking. "I may not be able to kill you yet, hunter," she laughed. "But I will once I destroy your magical shield." Her voice rose again, a terrible cacophony of shrieks and yowls put to the music of the seventh circle.

Oh God, the pain was bouncing under her skin like a demented pin cushion. It was an ax cleanly dividing the hemispheres of her brain. It was a thousand insects eating her bone marrow.

"Did you really think that your amateur spells could match me?" asked the Matriarch with mocking incredulity, stepping forward with complete confidence. "I've lived hundreds of years, girl!"

_Bobby, MOVE! _Finally, she felt the hunter back away as he managed to reload his gun.

"GET BACK!" Bobby opened fire, but the sound waves that emanated from Sarai literally stopped the buckshot and herbs in midair. They sprinkled uselessly to the ground in front of Adrienne. Sarai glared in his direction, her voice rising to a soprano, and the hunter was flung like a rag doll, rolling to a stop some fifty feet away.

Bobby was out of Sarai's range! The pain halved, and Adrienne blinked her eyes into focus. Sure, she still couldn't move more than the barest digits, but for a moment Sarai's concentration was divided just enough to give Adrienne back use of her fingers. _She may be powerful, but she's still a human! _Moving her hands to her convenient belt sent railroad spikes into her head, but she twisted the cord with grinding teeth.

Sarai pinned Adrienne's fingers with a crushing boot. Adrienne howled as two of her fingers broke. "Time to die, witch," said the Matriarch. Her song rose to a crescendo.

Adrienne's...

mind...

suddenly...

_cleared. _

The plan Adrienne had been constructing was not a friendly one. It depended on three risky assumptions:

One, that Hannibal and Hex would survive a confrontation with the Matriarchs. She needed them both.

Two, that once a human soul left a human body, that soul could no longer transmit pain to the body.

Three, that Sarai's song did not truly target the human heart. Adrienne counted on it actually affecting the soul.

What Sarai failed to recognize was that Adrienne's power was much more than her own physical form. She'd been saving her power and energy away in Hannibal and Hex, waiting on the final confrontation. They were living batteries.

What Sarai also failed to recognize was that she could only torment a soul while it was _inside_ a human body.

With this thought, the world began to tunnel and fade.

And Adrienne died.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**Hey diddle-diddle, **

**The cat and the fiddle,**

**The cow jumped over the moon...  
**


	17. Chapter 17

Just moments after Adrienne breathed her last, Sam, Dean, Hex and Hannibal arrived on the scene.

Bobby had disposed all pretense of killing the Matriarch. Instead, he was cradling Adrienne's limp body, bowed over her, shaking very slightly. He knew and accepted that without Adrienne, they could not win.

Sam stopped dead. He paled. "No," he whispered. "No, it can't be." _This can't be happening. We killed all of the minors, and two of the Matriarchs. This shouldn't be happening!_

"Oh, but it is," replied Sarai silkily, watching from a few paces away. Her voice literally made the humans' skin crawl.

"What did you do?" shouted Dean, leveling his shotgun at the witch, pulling the trigger.

Sarai cackled, and the sound stopped the iron shot several feet from her. "Exactly what I wanted: I killed the only witch on the planet that could depose me."

Sam strode, unfeeling, towards Adrienne. He came to his senses kneeled at her side. Bobby looked up at him, shocking the younger man with heavy tear tracks on his face. "I couldn't save her," he said brokenly. "I ran out of ammo."

Sam couldn't speak for his grief. He smoothed back her blood-crusted hair and gently touched his lips to hers. It was the goodbye kiss they'd never had.

Dean swore vehemently at the witch and reloaded, pulling both triggers, reloading again. He didn't realize he, too, was out of all witch-killing ammo until his hand met an empty bag.

"Oh, sweet agony! Precious sorrow!" exclaimed the Matriarch, hand to her breast. "Allow me to savor your despair before I end your sad lives..."

Hannibal and Hex limped solemnly to their mistress's cooling body. Sam watched through blurred eyes as they sat at Adrienne's head, ears down.

_We're going to die, _realized Sam. _All of us. We're out of ammo, we have no chance with the knifes, and the animals are spent. We're all dead. _

"As soon as I kill you all," giggled the Matriarch, enthralled by her victory. "I will drink her blood, and her power will become mine!"

Suddenly, the dog projected his thoughts to every mind in the glen. _Not if _we_ have anything to say about it! _cried Hannibal.

_Now, brother! _yelled Hex. As one, the two animals set a claw on Adrienne's chest, and ripped her shirt in two.

Laced like a bizarre vest across Adrienne's chest, over a thin camisole, was an intricate array, speckled with unpolished stones, bits of fur, and a few tufts of herb. In the very center, securely over her heart, was a mirror tied with blonde hairs twisted together. Within the mirror was swirling fog and light.

Hannibal and Hex bent their noses to the center of the array.

The vest began to glow.

"NO!" shrieked the Matriarch.

Sam and Bobby followed some deep-buried instinct and backtracked rapidly. Adrienne's spine arched to the point of snapping, and the mirror burned like a small sun, illuminating the entire glen.

With a mighty inhale, the young witch's eyes flew open.

"NOOO!" screeched Sarai. "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!"

"I beg to differ," said Adrienne, rising to her feet. Her hair blew like she faced a wind, and her face was lit from beneath by the mirror blazing on her chest.

Sarai began to sing, a look of fear and loathing on her face.

It was Adrienne's turn to laugh. "You see, Sarai!" she said. "You cannot harm a body that is, by all counts, dead!"

The Matriarch's scream was of the purest hatred. "IMPOSSIBLE!"

"Threadspell is capable of much, Matriarch," said Adrienne, threading her fingers through the vest. "It is capable of healing, killing, severing...and binding."

"She bound her own soul to her body, but outside of it!" exclaimed Bobby. Sam and Dean's hearts soared.

Adrienne cupped the mirror by the axises. "You will never harm anyone again, witch!"

At her words, Hannibal and Hex leaned against their mistress's legs.

Sam watched the power flow from the Hex and Hannibal into Adrienne, funneling down the array. Dean, Sam, and Bobby took cover in a hurry. With a shouted word like an eagle's shrill cry, a burst of light pulsed from the mirror.

Sarai's scream turned the trees around them black. She vaporized into thin air, and the motes of ash were scattered like dust.

"Yeah!" Dean hollered.

"WOOO-HOOO!" Sam raised both hands in victory.

Bobby clapped the boys on the shoulders. "Told you she was the best!"

Hannibal, Hex, and Adrienne wobbled, and the two animals fell to their bellies, completely drained. Adrienne did not seem perturbed, but knelt where she was and touched their collars, saying a quick spell. The animals' eyes closed, and their bodies stilled.

"What about them?" asked Bobby as the hunters approached, still exclaiming with victory. As he spoke, Hex and Hannibal's pelts began to crawl, like something moved beneath them.

Adrienne turned sparkling, joyous eyes to Sam. "Your knife, please."

He obliged, and watched her neatly slice open the skin of her familiars. She lifted from the surgical folds a kitten from Hex, and a puppy from Hannibal, both covered in fluids and eyes glued shut.

"There, there," Adrienne soothed, wrapping the wriggling bodies in her tattered shirt. "They're the next generation," she said proudly. "Remember, familiars are the sum of their predecessors!"

"Hey, little guy," murmured Sam in wonderment. He glanced at Adrienne's soul, contained in the mirror. "Shouldn't you put that back?"

She looked down, as though surprised it was still there. "Yeah, I guess I should. Hold them, please." She passed the baby familiars to him, and he cradled each in one large palm. Adrienne laced her fingers through the vest once more. She murmured an indecipherable phrase, and the light surged from the mirror along the threads, sinking into her flesh, lighting up her eyes with blue. She blinked, sighing with relief.

"Hey," said Sam. It felt natural to greet her: the life was back in her eyes.

"Hey, yourself," she smiled back. "You know, I felt that kiss earlier."

He reddened slightly. "You did?"

"Yup. Even though it was Hex and Hannibal that supplied the juice for my out-of-body experience, it was you that brought me back."

His heart soared, and with the kitten mewing and the puppy whining between them, he slotted his lips over hers. It felt like freedom, like the ultimate win, like finding solace.

"Oh, God," moaned Dean, rolling his eyes. "Not too much tongue, Sammy."

Bobby smacked the elder Winchester on the back of the head. "Idjit."

The two of them walked away slowly, leaving the wandering witch and the hunter to their homecoming amidst the trees twisted like wild architecture and the falling leaves like holiday confetti.


	18. Chapter 18

**Author's Note:**

**I would like to personally thank all of my supporters for this story, but in particular, the ones who spurred me on with their kind words.**

**SPN Mum - Without you, this story would have stopped at Ch. 10. Your constant encouragement made each chapter worthwhile. Thank you!**

**Ieatrevelations - You were a welcome surprise towards the end, when I was struggling the most. Thank you for your kind words and honest reviews!**

**Mzzmarie - You are awesome, and your reviews never fail to lift my spirits. Thank you!**

**Melanie-Baker - Nice to meet you, and I hope you liked the story!  
**

**And to everyone else who watched, lurked, dropped in, glanced, or cheered secretly: Thank you!**

**This chapter is for you all.**

* * *

With all threat of evil gone from the woods, even the corpses (which left piles of ash in their place), the forest seemed immediately relieved. The respirations of trees seemed to resume after a long pause, and faintly, as though making a journey back home, crickets began to sing in the distance. Somehow, through some obscure and dastardly time warp, it was only midnight as Sam and Adrienne left the woods and entered the junkyard. "I can't believe the time," groaned Adrienne. "You guys do this how often?"

He was gently supporting her with one hand around her left side, and cradling baby Hannibal in the other. "Fairly often," Sam said, smiling. "All-nighters are part of the job. Getting off the high afterward enough to sleep is the real trick."

"No kidding," she giggled. "I feel like I could run a marathon."

Sam was quiet for a moment. _Run. _"Do you intend to run?"

Adrienne stopped, his hand slipping from her ribs. They stood in the junkyard faintly illuminated by luna, regarding each other with a sense of sudden, uncomfortable formality. Mortal and her sister Peril no longer colored the scheme of their relationship. This was uncharted territory: it felt like the edge of the world map from the age of Columbus. _Here be monsters..._

"We're both adults," Adrienne said finally, with a tone like she was arguing with herself. "We can't afford innuendo, or subtly, or shyness. Not with this."

"Or hesitation," added Sam. "Not with the lives we lead."

Adrienne hitched Hex's soft body higher in her grasp nervously, feeling a bit maniacal. "So let's just be honest with each other."

"Yes, let's."

Silence fell again. Longer, this time.

"Crap," muttered Adrienne. "This is harder than it looks."

"Let me try," he sighed, brow furrowing in that uniquely Sam way. He sidled closer. "I don't want you to go."

She urged him on with perceptive, attentive eyes.

_A good start, _he thought. _Now don't cage her in. _"Not yet, at least," Sam continued in a rush. "I think...no, I _know _I would regret it if I just let you leave without letting this play out fully." If his heart was a steak, he'd just given her the charcoal, lighter's fluid, matches, and A1 sauce. Somehow, this felt a hundred times more dangerous than the hunt he'd just finished.

Adrienne unconsciously stroked the kitten wrapped in the tatters of her shirt, face hidden, body slumped with exhaustion and the weight of the conversation. "You know how long I've wandered, Sam?" she queried.

He suppressed the urge to deflate. _What's that got to do with this? _"No," he replied simply.

"Since I was born. For my childhood, I lived with a bunch of carnival folks, training as a witch with one of them who was not my blood relative. In those sixteen years, I crossed the USA a total of four times. That was roughly 12,000 miles."

Sam followed her logic with no small amount of tension.

"When that woman died, I left the carnival and began to search out my heritage. I visited covens near and far, not all of them friendly. I poured over library and town hall records looking for my ancestors. I put another 4,000 miles under my boots.

"And then I found threadspell," she murmured, the tale unspinning from her mouth. "Someone else along my family tree had started the research, but deemed it too hard to understand. I picked up where they left off. I untangled the knots as I came to them, kept winding the knowledge onto my brain's bobbin, until before I knew it, I had gotten it all. I had done what all my predecessors had failed to complete."

Sam could feel her excitement, her pride...it allowed him to put aside his momentary afflictions of the heart. "You accomplished something big."

"Yeah," she murmured, eyes grateful that he understood. "The Matriarchs found out, and I dodged them for three years. Another couple of thousand miles."

He could feel a point coming.

"The point is," she said, as though reading his mind. "I wandered, then I ran. The point is," she repeated, putting a hand over his heart. "That in all those miles and miles, I never felt like I had a reason to stay put." She turned vulnerable eyes supplemented with truth to his face, searching. "I met you. And now, I feel home."

Sam's face went slack as his heart imploded.

"So let's walk together," she whispered. "As long as it takes."

Sam nodded, throat pained in a foreign way, and bent to capture her lips with his.

* * *

**_FIN_**


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